hemmed in by cliffs, and was bending down to it, but before he had
moistened his lips he drew back: just because he was so thirsty he
resolved to deny himself drink. Hastily, almost vehemently, he turned
his back on the spring, and after this little victory over himself, his
storm-tossed heart seemed a little calmer. Far, far from hence and from
the wilderness and from the Sacred Mountain he felt impelled to fly, and
he would gladly have fled then and there to a distance. Whither should
he flee? It was all the same, for he was in search of suffering, and
suffering, like weeds, grows on every road. And from whom? This
question repeated itself again and again as if he had shouted it in the
very home of echo, and the answer was not hard to find: "It is from
yourself that you would flee. It is your own inmost self that is your
enemy; bury yourself in what desert you will, it will pursue you, and it
would be easier for you to cut off your shadow than to leave that
behind?"

His whole consciousness was absorbed by this sense of impotency, and now,
after the stormy excitement of the last few hours, the deepest depression
took possession of his mind. Exhausted, unstrung, full of loathing of
himself and life, he sank down on a stone, and thought over the
occurrences of the last few days with perfect impartiality.

"Of all the fools that ever I met," thought he, "I have gone farthest in
folly, and have thereby led things into a state of confusion which I
myself could not make straight again, even if I were a sage--which I
certainly never shall be any more than a tortoise or a phoenix. I once
heard tell of a hermit who, because it is written that we ought to bury
the dead, and because he had no corpse, slew a traveller that he might
fulfil the commandment: I have acted in exactly the same way, for, in
order to spare another man suffering and to bear the sins of another,