When I heard this story from him, I thought it well to ask, whether he had brought from any place he had visited any rare root, or fruit, or stone. ‘Nothing at all,’ said he, ‘except that I carry about this root for my own use, and if I chew and swallow the least particle of it, when I am suffering from languor or cold, I am stimulated and get warm.’ As he spoke he gave it me to taste, warning me at the same time that it must be used very sparingly. My physician, William Quacquelben, who was at that time still alive, tasted it, and from the heat with which it inflamed his mouth, pronounced it to be true Napellus or Aconite.[247] This, I think, is the proper place to tell you of the miracle wrought by another Turkish pilgrim and monk. He went about in a shirt and white mantle reaching down to the feet, and let his hair grow long, so that he resembled the apostles as they are usually depicted by our painters. Under an engaging appearance was concealed the mind of an impostor; but the Turks venerated him as a man famous for his miracles. They urged my dragomans to bring him to me that I might see him. He dined with me, behaving soberly and modestly, and then went down into the courtyard of the house, and returned soon afterwards carrying a stone of enormous weight, with which he struck himself on his bare breast several blows that had well nigh felled an ox. Then he laid his hand on an iron which had been made white hot in a fire lighted for the purpose. He put this into his mouth, and turned it about in every direction so that his saliva hissed. The iron he took into his mouth was oblong, but thicker at either end and rectangular, and so heated by the fire that it was just like a glowing coal. When he had done this, he put the iron back in the fire and departed, after bidding me farewell, and receiving a present. My servants, who were standing around, were astonished, except one who thought himself cleverer than the rest. ‘And why,’ said he, ‘you stupid fellows, do you wonder at this? Do you believe these things are done in reality; they are mere feats of legerdemain and optical delusions?’ Without more ado he seized the iron by the part that stood a good way out of the fire, to prove it could be handled without injury. But no sooner had he closed his hand, than he drew it back, with the palm and fingers so burnt that it was several days before he was well; an accident which was followed by great laughter from his fellow-servants, who asked him, ‘Whether he now believed it was hot, or was still incredulous?’ and invited him to touch it again.