Well, thou hast seen what awaits thee at the threshold of knowledge.

Thou hast confronted the first foe that menaces him whom the senses yet grasp and inthrall.

Dost thou wonder that I close upon thee the gates forever?
Dost thou not comprehend, at last, that it needs a soul tempered and purified and raised, not by external spells, but by its own sublimity and valour, to pass the threshold and disdain the foe?
Wretch! all my silence avails nothing for the rash, for the sensual,--for him who desires our secrets but to pollute them to gross enjoyments and selfish vice.

How have the imposters and sorcerers of the earlier times perished by their very attempt to penetrate the mysteries that should purify, and not deprave! They have boasted of the Philosopher's Stone, and died in rags; of the immortal elixir, and sunk to their grave, grey before their time.

Legends tell you that the fiend rent them into fragments.