The Alchemist | Page 6

are so strange that
you don't know how to continue the conversation.
"My name is Melchizedek," said the old man. "How many sheep do you have?"
"Enough," said the boy. He could see that the old man wanted to know more about his life.
"Well, then, we've got a problem. I can't help you if you feel you've got enough sheep."
The boy was getting irritated. He wasn't asking for help. It was the old man who had asked for a drink
of his wine, and had started the conversation.
"Give me my book," the boy said. "I have to go and gather my sheep and get going."
"Give me one-tenth of your sheep," said the old man, "and I'll tell you how to find the hidden treasure."
The boy remembered his dream, and suddenly everything was clear to him. The old woman hadn't
charged him anything, but the old man—maybe he was her husband—was going to find a way to get
much more money in exchange for information about something that didn't even exist. The old man was
probably a Gypsy, too.

But before the boy could say anything, the old man leaned over, picked up a stick, and began to write in
the sand of the plaza. Something bright reflected from his chest with such intensity that the boy was
momentarily blinded. With a movement that was too quick for someone his age, the man covered
whatever it was with his cape. When his vision returned to normal, the boy was able to read what the old
man had written in the sand.
There, in the sand of the plaza of that small city, the boy read the names of his father and his mother and
the name of the seminary he had attended. He read the name of the merchant's daughter, which he hadn't
even known, and he read things he had never told anyone.
*
"I'm the king of Salem," the old man had said.
"Why would a king be talking with a shepherd?" the boy asked, awed and embarrassed.
"For several reasons. But let's say that the most important is that you have succeeded in discovering your
destiny."
The boy didn't know what a person's "destiny" was.
"It's what you have always wanted to accomplish. Everyone, when they are young, knows what their
destiny is.
"At that point in their lives, everything is clear and everything is possible. They are not afraid to dream,
and to yearn for everything they would like to see happen to them in their lives. But, as time passes, a
mysterious force begins to convince them that it will be impossible for them to realize their destiny."
None of what the old man was saying made much sense to the boy. But he wanted to know what the
"mysterious force" was; the merchant's daughter would be impressed when he told her about that!
"It's a force that appears to be negative, but actually shows you how to realize your destiny. It prepares
your spirit and your will, because there is one great truth on this planet: whoever you are, or whatever it is
that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the
universe. It's your mission on earth."
"Even when all you want to do is travel? Or marry the daughter of a textile merchant?"
"Yes, or even search for treasure. The Soul of the World is nourished by people's happiness. And also
by unhappiness, envy, and jealousy. To realize one's destiny is a person's only real obligation. All things
are one.
"And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it."
They were both silent for a time, observing the plaza and the townspeople. It was the old man who
spoke first.
"Why do you tend a flock of sheep?"
"Because I like to travel."

The old man pointed to a baker standing in his shop window at one corner of the plaza. "When he was a
child, that man wanted to travel, too. But he decided first to buy his bakery and put some money aside.
When he's an old man, he's going to spend a month in Africa. He never realized that people are capable,
at any time in their lives, of doing what they dream of."
"He should have decided to become a shepherd," the boy said.
"Well, he thought about that," the old man said. "But bakers are more important people than shepherds.
Bakers have homes, while shepherds sleep out in the open. Parents would rather see their children marry
bakers than shepherds."
The boy felt a pang in his heart, thinking about the merchant's daughter. There was surely a baker in her
town.
The old man continued, "In the long run, what people think about shepherds and bakers becomes more
important for them than their own destinies."
The old man leafed through the book, and fell to reading a page he