By the time the neighbours came in, Abon Hassan’s rage began to abate. The first who entered the room got between him and his mother; and taking the cane out of his hand, said to him, What are you doing, Abon Hassan? Have you no fear of God, nor reason? Did ever a son, so well brought up as you, ever dare to strike his mother? Are you not ashamed to treat yours so, who loves you so tenderly? Abon Hassan looked at him that spoke, without returning an answer; and then staring on all that followed him, said, Who is that Abon Hassan you speak of? Is it me you call by that name? This question put the neighbours a little to a stand. How! said he that spoke first, do not you know your mother, who brought you up, and with whom you have always lived? Be gone, you are impertinent people, replied Abon Hassan; I neither know her nor you, and will not know you; I am not Abon Hassan; but will make you know, to your cost, I am the commander of the faithful. At this discourse, the neighbours no longer doubted but that he was mad; and to prevent his being guilty of the like actions, seized him, notwithstanding his resistance, and bound him hand and foot, while one in the mean time ran for the keeper of the hospital for mad folks, who came presently with a bull’s pizzle, chains, and handcuffs, and a great many attendants. When they entered the room, Abon Hassan, who little expected such treatment, endeavoured all he could to unloose himself; but after the keeper had given him two or three smart strokes upon his shoulders with the bull’s pizzle, he lay so quiet, that the keeper and his people might do what they would with him; who as soon as they had bound and manacled him, took him with them to the hospital; where, before the keeper put him into a room, he regaled him with fifty strokes of the bull’s pizzle on his shoulders, which he repeated every day without pity for three weeks, bidding him to remember that he was not the commander of the faithful. Abon Hassan’s mother went every day to see her son, and could not forbear crying to see him fall away daily, and to hear him sigh and complain at the hardships he endured. In short, his shoulders, back, and sides were so black and blue and bruized, 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 rebuked her with so much fury, that she was forced to leave him, and return home disconsolate at his obstinacy.