CONVERSATION WITH KINGS

1

Before Zarathustra had been an hour on his way in the mountains and forests he suddenly observed a strange procession. Right on the path which he was about to descend two kings came walking, adorned with crowns and purple belts and as colorful as flamingos: they drove before them a laden ass. “What do these kings want in my domain?” said Zarathustra in astonishment to his heart, and he quickly hid behind a bush. But when the kings drew near he said half aloud, like someone talking to himself: “Strange! Strange! How does this fit together? I see two kings-and only one ass!”

At that the two kings halted, smiled, looked towards the spot from which the voice came, and then looked at one another. “We might think such things too,” said the king on the right, “but we do not say them.”

The king on the left, however, shrugged his shoulders and answered: “Perhaps that is a goatherd. Or a hermit who has lived too long among rocks and trees. For no society at all also spoils good manners.”

“Good manners?” the other king replied angrily and bitterly: “what is it we are trying to get away from? Is it not ‘good manners’? Our ‘good society’?

“Better, truly, to live among hermits and goatherds than with our gilded, false, painted mob—though it call itself‘good society.’

—“though it call itself ‘nobility.’ But everything there is false and foul, above all the blood, thanks to evil old diseases and worse quacks.

“The best and dearest to me today is a healthy peasant, coarse, shrewd, obstinate and enduring: that is the noblest type today.

“The peasant is the best today; and the peasant type should be master! But ours is the kingdom of the mob—I no longer let myself be deceived. Mob, however, means hodgepodge.

“Mob hodgepodge: in that everything is mixed with everything, saint and swindler and gentleman and Jew and every beast out of Noah’s ark.

“Good manners! Everything is false and foul with us. No one knows any longer how to revere: it is precisely that we are running away from. They are insipid, obtrusive curs; they gild palm leaves.

“This disgust chokes me, that we kings ourselves have become false, draped and disguised with the old yellowed pomp of our grandfathers, showpieces for the stupidest and the craftiest and whoever traffics for power today!

“We are not the first—and yet must represent them: we have at last become weary and disgusted with this deception.

“We have gone away from the rabble, from all those ranters and scribbling bluebottles, from the stench of shopkeepers, the ambitious wriggling, the bad breath-: phew, to live among the rabble;

—phew, for representing the first men among the rabble! Ah, disgust! disgust! disgust! What do we kings matter now!“—

“Your old sickness is upon you,” said the king on the left, “your disgust seizes you, my poor brother. But you know that someone is listening to us.”

Just then Zarathustra, who had opened his ears and eyes wide at this talk, rose from his hiding place, advanced towards the kings and began:

“He who listens to you, he who likes to listen to you, 0 kings, is called Zarathustra.

“I am Zarathustra, who once said: ‘What do kings matter now!’ Forgive me, it delighted me when you said to each other: ‘What do we kings matter now!’

“But here is my realm and my dominion: what might you be seeking in my domain? But perhaps on your way you have found what I seek: namely, the higher man.”

When the kings heard this, they beat their breasts and said with one voice: “We have been recognized!

“With the sword of these words you sever the thickest darkness of our hearts. You have discovered our distress, for behold! we are on our way to find the higher man—

“—the man who is higher than we: although we are kings. To him we convey this ass. For the highest man shall also be the highest lord on earth.

“There is no worse misfortune in all human destiny than when the mighty of the earth are not also the first men. Then everything becomes false and distorted and monstrous.

“And when they are even the last men, and more beast than man, then the price of the mob rises and rises, and at last mob virtue even says: ‘Behold, I alone am virtue!’”—

“What have I just heard?” replied Zarathustra; “what wisdom from kings! I am enchanted, and truly, I already feel the urge to make a rhyme about it:—

“—even if it should be a rhyme not fit for every one’s ears. I unlearned long ago to have consideration for long ears. Well then! Come on!”

(But here it happened that the ass too found speech:2 it said distinctly and maliciously, Yea-Yuh.)

Once upon a time—I believe, in the year of our grace number one—the Sybil spoke, drunk without wine: “Woe, now all goes to pieces! ”Decay! Decay! The world never sank so deep! “Rome sank to a whore and to a whorehouse, ”Rome’s Caesar sank to a beast, God himself—to Jew!”

2

These rhymes of Zarathustra delighted the kings; but the king on the right said: “0 Zarathustra, how well we did to set out to see you!

“For your enemies showed us your image in their mirror: there you looked out with the sneering grimace of a devil: so that we were afraid of you.

“But what good did it do! You always stung us again in our hearts and ears with your sayings. Then we said at last: What does it matter how he looks!

“We must hear him, him who teaches: ‘You shall love peace as a means to new wars, and the short peace more than the long!’

“No one ever spoke such warlike words: ‘What is good? To be brave is good. It is the good war that hallows every cause.’

“O Zarathustra, our fathers’ blood stirred in our veins at such words: it was like the voice of spring to old wine-casks.

“When the swords ran wild like red spotted snakes, then our fathers grew fond of life; the sun of every peace seemed to them languid and lukewarm, but the long peace made them ashamed.

“How they sighed, our fathers, when they saw brightly polished, dried-up swords on the wall! Like them they thirsted for war. For a sword thirsts to drink blood and sparkles with desire.”—

—When the kings spoke thus and talked eagerly of the happiness of their fathers, Zarathustra was overcome with no small temptation to mock their eagerness: for obviously they were very peaceful kings whom he saw before him, kings with old and refined features. But he restrained himself. “Well!” he said, “there leads the way, there lies the cave of Zarathustra; and this day shall yet have a long evening ! But at present a cry of distress calls me urgently away from you.

“It will honor my cave if kings want to sit and wait in it: but, to be sure, you will have to wait long!

“Well! What of that! Where today does one learn better to wait than at court? And all the virtue left to kings-is it not today called: being able to wait?”

Thus spoke Zarathustra.