Nay. Just one minute! You are saying nothing about the masterpieces of these virtuosos of black magic, who can produce whiteness, milk, and innocence out of any black you like: have you not noticed what a pitch of refinement is attained by their _chef d'œuvre_, their most audacious, subtle, ingenious, and lying artist-trick? Take care! These cellar-beasts, full of revenge and hate--what do they make, forsooth, out of their revenge and hate? Do you hear these words? Would you suspect, if you trusted only their words, that you are among men of resentment and nothing else?
"I understand, I prick my ears up again (ah! ah! ah! and I hold my nose). Now do I hear for the first time that which they have said so often: 'We good, _we are the righteous_'--what they demand they call not revenge but 'the triumph of _righteousness_'; what they hate is not their enemy, no, they hate 'unrighteousness,' 'godlessness'; what they believe in and hope is not the hope of revenge, the intoxication of sweet revenge (--"sweeter than honey," did Homer call it?), but the victory of God, of the _righteous_ _God_ over the 'godless'; what is left for them to love in this world is not _their_ brothers in hate, but their 'brothers in love,' as they say, all the good and righteous on the earth."
And how do they name that which serves them as a solace against all the troubles of life--their phantasmagoria of their anticipated future blessedness?
"How? Do I hear right? They call it 'the last judgment,' the advent of their kingdom, 'the kingdom of God'--but _in the meanwhile_ they live 'in faith,' 'in love,' 'in hope.'"