Chapter 8 Prologue VIII of Zarathustra

Having said these words to his heart, Zarathustra picked up the body and set out on his way.He hadn't even reached a hundred paces when a man slipped up beside him and whispered into his ear. --scare!The man who spoke was the buffoon in that tower! "O Zarathustra, leave this city!" said the buffoon. "There are too many who hate you. The good and the just hate you, and call you their enemy, their despiser; Believers hate you and call you a scourge of the crowd. It's your luck that people laugh at you: you talk too much like a buffoon. It's your luck that you mate yourself with the dead dog; at any rate, get out of this city, or I, the living, will have to jump over a dead man tomorrow."

When the man had finished speaking these words, he disappeared into the night; and Zarathustra went on by the black road. At the city gate the gravediggers met him: they shone torches on his face, recognized him as Zarathustra, and mocked him bitterly. "Zarathustra bears the dead dog on his back: alas, Zarathustra has become a gravedigger again! Our hands are too clean to bury the beast. Zarathustra wants to steal from the devil Go, and good luck with your meal! As long as the devil is not a better thief than you! He may steal both, and eat!" They laughed together. Zarathustra stepped forward without answering.He walked for two hours along the forest and the mud, and heard the howling of many hungry wolves; suddenly, he too felt hungry.He stopped in front of a lighted house with no neighbors.

"Hunger pursued me like a hungry robber," said Zarathustra, "among the woods and the mud, in the middle of the night, hunger seized me. My hunger has some strange vices.It often comes just after the meal, but today it doesn't come all day: where did it stay? " Zarathustra knocked at the door of the house.An old man came out with a lamp and asked, "Who has come to me, who has come to my sleep?" "A living man and a dead man," said Zarathustra, "give me a little food; I forget this by day. Wisdom says: He who feeds the hungry comforts his soul."

The old man went in, and at once came out with bread and wine, and gave them to Zarathustra. "This is a very bad place for the hungry," said he, "so I live here, and men and beasts come to me alone. But give your companion something to drink and eat; he is more than You are still weary." Zarathustra said: "My companion is dead; I cannot easily persuade him to do this." "It has nothing to do with me;" the old man complained, "whoever knocks at my door must accept the food I give him. Eat, and I wish you a safe journey!"— Then Zarathustra walked for two more hours, trusting in the stars and the road: he was in the habit of walking at night, and loved to look squarely at everything around him.When the east was just turning white, Zarathus was in a deep forest with nowhere to go.So he put the body in an empty tree as high as himself,—for he wanted to keep the wolves from finding it—and lay himself down on the moss in the ground.He immediately fell into a deep sleep. Although his body was tired, his soul was peaceful.