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