visitor.  Hajm was overjoyed at the present, and concluded from what he had seen that he or any other person who should treat a fakir in the same manner could convert him into gold, and consequently that by beating a number he might multiply his golden images.  Heated with this fond imagination, he quickly returned to his house and gave the necessary orders for a most sumptuous entertainment, to which he invited all the fakirs in the province.

When the keen appetite was assuaged, and the exhilarating sherbet began to enliven the convivial meeting, Hajm seized a ponderous club, and with it regaled his guests till he broke their heads, and the crimson torrent stained the carpet of hospitality.  The fakirs elevating the shriek of sore distress, the kutwal’s guard came to their assistance, and soon a multitude of people assembled, who, after binding the offender with the strong cord of captivity, carried him, together with the fakirs, before the governor of the city.  He demanded to know the reason why he had so inhospitably and cruelly behaved to these harmless people.  The confounded Hajm replied:  “As I was yesterday in the house of Abdal-Malik, a fakir suddenly appeared.  The merchant struck him some blows on the head, and he fell prostrate before him, transformed into a golden image.  Imagining that any other person could, by a similar behaviour, force any fakir to undergo the like metamorphosis, I invited these men to a banquet, and regaled them with some blows of my cudgel to compel them to a similar transformation; but the demon of avarice has deceived me, and the fascinating temptation of gold has involved me in a labyrinth of ills.”

The governor at once sent for Abdal-Malik, and, demanding a solution of Hajm’s mysterious tale, was thus answered by the charitable merchant:  “The unfortunate Hajm is my neighbour.  Some days ago he began to exhibit symptoms of a disordered imagination and distracted brain, and during these violent paroxysms of insanity he related some ridiculous fable of me and the rest of my neighbours.  No better specimen can be adduced than the extravagant action of which he now stands accused, and the absurd tale by which he attempts to apologise for the commission of it.  That madness may no longer usurp the palace of reason, to revel upon the ruins of his mind, deliver him to the sons of ingenuity, the preservers and restorers of health; let them purify his blood by sparing diet, abridge him of his daily potations, and by the force of medicinal beverage recall him from the precipice of ruin.”  This advice was warmly applauded by the governor, who, after Hajm had been compelled to ask pardon of the fakirs for the ill-treatment they had received, was soundly bastinadoed before the tribunal, and carried to the hospital for madness.