Chapter 76
The Phoenix BirdIN the Garden of Paradise, beneath the Tree of Knowledge,
bloomed a rose bush. Here, in the first rose, a bird was born. His
flight was like the flashing of light, his plumage was beauteous,
and his song ravishing. But when Eve plucked the fruit of the tree
of knowledge of good and evil, when she and Adam were driven from
Paradise, there fell from the flaming sword of the cherub a spark
into the nest of the bird, which blazed up forthwith. The bird
perished in the flames; but from the red egg in the nest there
fluttered aloft a new one—the one solitary Phoenix bird. The fable
tells that he dwells in Arabia, and that every hundred years, he
burns himself to death in his nest; but each time a new Phoenix,
the only one in the world, rises up from the red
