The Last Supper
For at this point the soothsayer interrupted the greeting between Zarathustra and his guests: he pushed forward like one who has no time to lose, seized Zarathustra’s hand, and cried: “But Zarathustra!
“One thing is more necessary than the other, so you say yourself: well then, one thing is more necessary to me now than everything else.
“A word at the right time: did you not invite me to a meal? And here are many who have come a long way. Surely you do not mean to feed us on speeches?
“Besides, all of you have already had too much to say for my taste about freezing, drowning, suffocating, and other bodily emergencies: but no one remembered my emergency, namely starving—”
(Thus spoke the soothsayer; but when Zarathustra’s animals heard these words, they ran away in fright. For they saw that whatever they had brought home during the day would not be enough to stuff the one soothsayer.)
“Including dying of thirst,” the soothsayer went on. “And although I hear water splashing here, like speeches of wisdom, that is, abundantly and tirelessly: I—want wine!
“Not everyone is a born water drinker like Zarathustra. Nor is water any good for the weary and the withered: we deserve wine,—that alone gives sudden recovery and health on the spot!”
On this occasion, when the soothsayer was craving wine, it happened that the king on the left, the silent one, also got a word in for once. “For wine,” he said, “we have provided, I together with my brother, the king on the right: we have wine enough,—a whole donkey-load. So nothing is lacking but bread.”
“Bread?” Zarathustra retorted, and laughed. “Bread is just what hermits do not have. But the human being does not live by bread alone, but also by the flesh of good lambs, of which I have two:
“—these shall be slaughtered quickly and prepared spicily, with sage: that is how I love it. Nor is there any lack of roots and fruits, good enough even for gourmets and gluttons; nor of nuts and other riddles to crack.
“So we will soon make a good meal. But whoever wants to eat with us must also lend a hand, the kings too. For with Zarathustra even a king may be a cook.”
This proposal was after everyone’s heart: except that the voluntary beggar balked at meat and wine and spices.
“Now just listen to this glutton Zarathustra!” he said jokingly. “Is this why one goes into caves and high mountains, to make such meals?
“Now indeed I understand what he once taught us: ‘Praised be a little poverty!’ And why he wants to abolish beggars.”
“Be of good cheer,” Zarathustra answered him, “as I am. Keep to your custom, you excellent one, grind your grains, drink your water, praise your cooking: if only it makes you glad!
“I am a law only for my own, I am not a law for all. But whoever belongs to me must be of strong bones, and of light feet too,—
“—merry for wars and festivals, no gloomy one, no dreamy Jack, ready for the hardest as for his festival, healthy and whole.
“The best belongs to my own and to me; and if it is not given to us, we take it:—the best food, the purest sky, the strongest thoughts, the most beautiful women!”—
Thus spoke Zarathustra; but the king on the right retorted: “Strange! Did anyone ever hear such clever things from the mouth of a wise man?
“And truly, that is the strangest thing about a wise man, when on top of everything he is also clever and no donkey.”
Thus spoke the king on the right, and wondered; but the donkey said Yea-a to his speech with ill will. This, however, was the beginning of that long meal which is called “the Last Supper” in the history books. And at it nothing else was talked about but the higher human.