,--the murderer of God. Stay! Sit down here beside me; it is not to
no purpose.

To whom would I go but unto thee? Stay, sit down! Do not however look at
me! Honour thus--mine ugliness!

They persecute me: now art THOU my last refuge. NOT with their hatred,
NOT with their bailiffs;--Oh, such persecution would I mock at, and be
proud and cheerful!

Hath not all success hitherto been with the well-persecuted ones? And
he who persecuteth well learneth readily to be OBSEQUENT--when once he
is--put behind! But it is their PITY--

--Their pity is it from which I flee away and flee to thee. O
Zarathustra, protect me, thou, my last refuge, thou sole one who
divinedst me:

--Thou hast divined how the man feeleth who killed HIM. Stay! And if
thou wilt go, thou impatient one, go not the way that I came. THAT way
is bad.

Art thou angry with me because I have already racked language too long?
Because I have already counselled thee? But know that it is I, the
ugliest man,

--Who have also the largest, heaviest feet. Where _I_ have gone, the way
is bad. I tread all paths to death and destruction.

But that thou passedst me by in silence, that thou blushedst--I saw it
well: thereby did I know thee as Zarathustra.

Every one else would have thrown to me his alms, his pity, in look and
speech. But for that--I am not beggar enough: that didst thou divine.

For that I am too RICH, rich in what is great, frightful, ugliest, most
unutterable! Thy shame, O Zarathustra, HONOURED me!

With difficulty did I get out of the crowd of the pitiful,--that I might
find the only one who at present teacheth that 'pity is obtrusive'--
thyself, O Zarathustra!

--Whether it be the pity of a God, or whether it be human pity, it is
offensive to modesty. And unwillingness to help may be nobler than the
virtue that rusheth to do so.

THAT however--namely, pity--is called virtue itself at present by
all petty people:--they have no reverence for great misfortune, great
ugliness, great failure.

Beyond all these do I look, as a dog looketh over the backs of thronging
flocks of sheep. They are petty, good-wooled, good-willed, grey people.

As the heron looketh contemptuously at shallow pools, with backward-bent
head, so do I look at the throng of grey little waves and wills and
souls.

Too long have we acknowledged them to be right, those petty people: SO
we have at last given them power as well;--and now do they teach that
'good is only what