replied, “There is no greatness and power but in God most high and almighty.  I am treated as a fool, though I am in my right senses.  I suffer all these injuries and indignities for the love of God.”  He was conducted to the hospital, where he was lodged in a grated cell; but before he was shut up, the keeper, who was hardened to such terrible execution, regaled him without pity with fifty strokes of the bastinado on his shoulders, which he repeated every day for three weeks, bidding him remember that he was not the commander of the faithful.  “I am not mad,” said Abou Hassan, “but if I wanted your assistance, nothing would so effectually make me mad as your cruel treatment.  I want not your advice.”

Abou Hassan’s mother went every day to visit her son, and could not forbear weeping at beholding him fall away, and sigh and complain at the hardships he endured.  In short, his shoulders, back, and sides were so black and bruised, that he could not turn himself.  His mother would willingly have talked with him, to comfort him, and to sound him whether he still retained the notion of being caliph; but whenever she opened her mouth, he stopped her with so much fury, that she was forced to leave him, and return home inconsolable at his obstinacy.

By degrees, however, those strong and lively ideas, which Abou Hassan had entertained, of having been clothed in the caliph’s habit, having exercised his authority, and been punctually obeyed and treated like the true caliph, the assurance of which had persuaded him that he was so, began to wear away.  Sometimes he would say to himself, “If I was the caliph and commander of the believers, how came I, when I awoke, to find myself at home dressed in my own apparel?  Why should I not have been attended by eunuchs, and their chief, and a crowd of beautiful ladies?  Why should the grand vizier, and all those emirs and governors of provinces, who prostrated themselves at my feet, forsake me?  Undoubtedly if I had any authority over them, they would have delivered me long ago out of the miserable condition I am in; certainly I ought to look upon all as a dream.  It is true, however, that I commanded the judge of the police to punish the imaum, and the four old men his companions; I ordered the grand vizier to carry my mother a thousand pieces of gold; and my commands were executed.  All these points are obstacles to my believing it a dream; but there are so many things that I cannot comprehend, nor ever shall, that I will put my trust in God, who knows all things.”

Abou Hassan was taken up with these thoughts and reflections when his mother came to see him.  She found him so much altered and emaciated that she shed a torrent of tears; in the midst of which she saluted him as she used to do, and he returned her salutation, which he had never done before since he had been in the hospital.  This she looked upon to be a good sign.  “Well, my son,” said she, wiping her tears, “how do you do, and how do you find yourself?