A stranger carrying a rose in his left hand came to Paracelsus, declaring, “I

wish to become your disciple. I want you to teach me Alchemy. I want to walk
beside you on that path that leads to the Philosopher’s Stone." Paracelsus
replied slowly, “The Path is the Stone, the point of departure is the Stone. If
these words are unclear to you, you have not yet begun to understand. Every step
you take is the goal you seek."

The other man looked at him with misgiving. "But is there no goal?"

Paracelsus laughed. "My detractors, who are no less numerous than imbecilic, say
that there is not, and they call me an impostor. I believe they are mistaken,
though it is possible that I am deluded. I know that there is a Path." There was
silence, and then the other man spoke.

"I am ready to walk that Path with you, but all I ask is a proof before we begin
the journey."

"You are famed," the young stranger said, "for being able to burn a rose to
ashes and make it emerge again, by the magic of your art. Let me witness that.”
He held up the rose in his left hand. The rose troubled Paracelsus, who said: "I
have no need of credulity; I demand belief."

"It is precisely because I am not credulous that I wish to see with my own eyes
the annihilation and resurrection of the rose," replied the stranger.

"You are credulous," Paracelsus repeated. "You say that I can destroy it?"

"Any man has the power to destroy it," said the disciple.

"You are wrong," the master responded. "Do you truly believe that something may
be turned to nothing?"

"We are not in paradise," the young man stubbornly replied. "Here all things are
mortal."

Paracelsus replied, “The Fall is not realizing that we are in paradise.”

“But a rose can be burned" the disciple said defiantly.

Said Paracelsus, “There is still some fire there," pointing toward the hearth.
“The rose is eternal, and only its appearances may change. At a word from me,
though, you would see it again, for I deploy that instrument used by the deity
to create the heavens and the earth and the invisible paradise in which we
exist, but which the Fall hides from us. I am speaking of the Word, the Logos —
”

"It matters not the slightest to me whether you work with alembics or with the
Word!” the stranger cried.

"The miracle would not bring you the belief you seek,” Paracelsus replied. “And
what have you even done to deserve such a gift?"

The stranger suddenly threw his incarnate and incarnadine rose into the flames.
Its color vanished, and all that remained was a pinch of ash. For one infinite
moment, he awaited the words, and the miracle.

Paracelsus sat unmoving. After awhile he said with strange simplicity: “Perhaps
I am a fraud. There are the ashes that were the rose, and that shall be the rose
no more."

The young man was ashamed. Paracelsus was a charlatan, or a mere visionary, and
he, an intruder, had come through his door and forced him now to confess that
his famed magic arts were false.
He knelt before the master and said: "What I have done is unpardonable. I have
lacked belief, which the Lord demands of all the faithful. Let me, then,
continue to see ashes. I will come back again when I am stronger, and I will be
your disciple, and at the end of the Path I will see the rose."

He spoke with genuine passion, but that passion was the pity he felt for the
aged master-so venerated, so inveighed against, so renowned, and therefore so
hollow. Who was he to discover with sacrilegious hand that behind the mask was
no one. He went out. Paracelsus accompanied him to the foot of the staircase and
told him he would always be welcome in that house. Both men knew they would
never see each other again. Paracelsus was then alone. Before putting out the
lamp and returning to his weary armchair, he poured the delicate fistful of
ashes from one hand into the concave other, and he whispered a single word. The
rose appeared again.