Now, the people were afraid that the alchemist would persuade their king to finance even more experiments, so they surrounded the palace and denounced him as a fraud. The king faced a terrible quandary: He believed in the monk but knew that the people would not be placated. The monk took matters into his own hand. He blinded himself, putting out his eyes with a red-hot poker. When the monk showed himself to the people, his eye sockets gaping holes, he asked if his punishment were not terrible enough. Subdued, the people agreed that justice had been served and ended their protest.

While the people of Pagan went back to their own business, the monk returned to his laboratory. His anguish was so great that he smashed all his instruments. He bitterly renounced alchemy and ordered his assistant to toss the lump of metal into the nearest toilet pit. That night, the assistant came to him with a wondrous tale: The latrine was glowing as if it were full of fairies and spirits! Hearing the report of this marvel, the monk realized that the metal had indeed been transformed into the Philosopher’s Stone. The manuscript must have used the term acid in error, meaning instead human waste.

Quickly, he ordered his assistant to retrieve the stone and go to the nearest butcher’s stall to obtain a pair of goat’s or bull’s eyes. The novice monk could only find one eye from each animal. Nevertheless, the monk put the eyes into his empty sockets and touched them with the magical stone. At once his vision was restored. Of course, the eyes in his head were of different size, and he looked quite strange. “Because of this, people will remember me as the Goat-Bull Monk,” he laughed.

Though it was well past midnight, the monk went to the royal palace and announced his discovery of the Philosopher’s Stone to the king. “My work in the world of humans is nearly complete,” he explained. “Tomorrow I must leave. Tonight you and all your subjects should melt down your lead and base metal objects. Leave the molten ore in large jars outside your homes.”