1. Thus did that foolish alchemy behave:

    perhaps alchemy shaves beards.

  2. Was alchemy, then, elixir, hair, and dung,

    and this hideous doctrine?

  3. I had known him with nothing but the beard of a

    he-goat—and shaving it would be too slight a punishment.

  4. Would that I knew: had water been poured upon it

    before this, or was there no water there?

  5. He never worked with arsenic, though, by my life,

    in it lies a cure for the malady of chins.

  6. His hair and his sense were gone, and he began

    to hide himself and walk in shame.

  7. He claimed that he had been stricken with an illness.

    The claim was true: shaving itself is an illness.

  8. What illness could then be greater than that?

    Beside him, madmen are sages.

  9. He hoped shaving would bring an impossible result,

    but his expectation and hope were sorely disappointed.

  10. We had never heard that beards were the stone of the

    alchemists, while the ingredients are placed in the rump.

  11. He claimed that they had pointed him toward it,

    and that this was why judgment fell upon the beard.

  12. He learned the science from a contemptible pauper;

    he and a grazing brute are alike.

  13. He sought happiness through misery—but far

    from it! How could the wretched prosper with ignorance?

  14. The disciple’s beard was lost for nothing;

    and now that it is lost, may oblivion cover it.

Sol 5.6