At this point, a detachment of troops sent by the viceroy entered the town and restored order. The alienist immediately demanded that Porfírio be handed over to him, along with fifty or so other individuals, whom he declared to be mentally deranged. Furthermore, they promised to hand over a further nineteen of the barber’s followers, who were convalescing from injuries inflicted in the initial rebellion.

This moment in Itaguaí’s crisis also marked the zenith of Simão Bacamarte’s influence. Everything he asked for they gave him, and one of the most vivid proofs of the eminent doctor’s influence can be found in the alacrity with which the councillors, restored to their positions, agreed that Sebastião Freitas should also be committed to the asylum. Aware of the extraordinary inconsistency of this particular councillor’s opinions, the alienist identified the case as pathological, and locked the man up. The same thing happened to the apothecary. Ever since he had learned of Soares’s instantaneous decision to back the rebellion, the alienist had weighed it against the apothecary’s consistent expressions of support for him, even on the very eve of the revolt, and had him arrested too. Crispim Soares did not deny the fact, but tried to explain it away by saying that he had succumbed to an impulse of fear upon seeing the rebellion triumphant, pointing out in his own defense that he had quickly returned to his sickbed and played no further part in events. Simão Bacamarte did not argue with him, remarking to the others present that fear can also be father to insanity, and that Crispim Soares’s case struck him as one of the clearest examples of such a phenomenon.

But the most obvious proof of Simão Bacamarte’s influence was the docility with which the town council handed over its own chairman. This worthy official had declared in open session that he would be content with no less than a tun of blood to cleanse him of the Canjicas’s effrontery, and his words reached the alienist’s ears via the mouth of the town clerk, who came to him flushed with excitement. Simão Bacamarte began by putting the town clerk in the Casa Verde, and from there he went to the town hall and informed the council that the chairman of the council was suffering from “bull mania,” a type of madness he intended to make a study of, to the great benefit of mankind. The council at first hesitated, but finally gave in.