The Barber Who Sought the Philosophers' Stone

In the house At the Golden Head there is said to have lived a barber who left all the trade in the ground-floor shop to his journeyman, while he himself gave himself up upstairs in his room to the art of alchemy and searched for the philosophers' stone, by which he might turn any metal into gold. One day a stranger came to him who passed himself off as an adept in alchemy, and before his eyes actually turned a bronze head of Theophrastus Paracelsus into gold with some liquid. Then he bade him burn all his books and smash his vessels, promising to teach him the true art. The barber obeyed in blissful hope, but the stranger laughed at him and vanished. The barber was afterwards found dead among the shards of his alchemical vessels. His journeyman bought the house and named it, after that gilded head, the Golden Head.