278.—­Wanderer, who art thou?  I see thee follow thy path without scorn, without love, with unfathomable eyes, wet and sad as a plummet which has returned to the light insatiated out of every depth—­what did it seek down there?—­with a bosom that never sighs, with lips that conceal their loathing, with a hand which only slowly grasps:  who art thou? what hast thou done?  Rest thee here:  this place has hospitality for every one—­refresh thyself!  And whoever thou art, what is it that now pleases thee?  What will serve to refresh thee?  Only name it, whatever I have I offer thee!  “To refresh me?  To refresh me?  Oh, thou prying one, what sayest thou!  But give me, I pray thee—–­” What? what?  Speak out!  “Another mask!  A second mask!”

279.  Men of profound sadness betray themselves when they are happy:  they have a mode of seizing upon happiness as though they would choke and strangle it, out of jealousy—­ah, they know only too well that it will flee from them!

280.  “Bad!  Bad!  What?  Does he not—­go back?” Yes!  But you misunderstand him when you complain about it.  He goes back like every one who is about to make a great spring.

281.—­“Will people believe it of me?  But I insist that they believe it of me:  I have always thought very unsatisfactorily of myself and about myself, only in very rare cases, only compulsorily, always without delight in ‘the subject,’ ready to digress from ‘myself,’ and always without faith in the result, owing to an unconquerable distrust of the possibility of self-knowledge, which has led me so far as to feel a CONTRADICTIO in ADJECTO even in the idea of ‘direct knowledge’ which theorists allow themselves:—­this matter of fact is almost the most certain thing I know about myself.  There must be a sort of repugnance in me to believe anything definite about myself.—­Is there perhaps some enigma therein?  Probably; but fortunately nothing for my own teeth.—­Perhaps it betrays the species to which I belong?—­but not to myself, as is sufficiently agreeable to me.”

282.—­“But what has happened to you?”—­“I do not know,” he said, hesitatingly; “perhaps the Harpies have flown over my table.”—­It sometimes happens nowadays that a gentle, sober, retiring man becomes suddenly mad, breaks the plates, upsets the table, shrieks, raves, and shocks everybody—­and finally withdraws, ashamed, and raging at himself—­whither? for what purpose?  To famish apart?  To suffocate with his memories?—­To him who has the desires of a lofty and dainty soul, and only seldom finds his table laid and his food prepared, the danger will always be great—­nowadays, however, it is extraordinarily so.  Thrown into the midst of a noisy and plebeian age, with which he does not like to eat out of the same dish, he may readily perish of hunger and thirst—­or, should he nevertheless finally “fall to,” of sudden nausea.—­We have probably all sat at tables to which we did not belong; and precisely the most spiritual of us, who are most difficult to nourish, know the dangerous dyspepsia which originates from a sudden insight and disillusionment about our food and our messmates—­the after-dinner nausea.