CHAPTER I

Produced by Jeroen Hellingman.

The Social Cancer

A Complete English Version of Noli Me Tangere from the Spanish of

José Rizal

By

Charles Derbyshire

Manila

Philippine Education Company

New York: World Book Company

1912

THE NOVELS OF JOSÉ RIZAL

Translated from Spanish into English

BY CHARLES DERBYSHIRE

THE SOCIAL CANCER (NOLI ME TANGERE)

THE REIGN OF GREED (EL FILIBUSTERISMO)

Copyright, 1912, by Philippine Education Company.

Entered at Stationers' Hall.

Registrado en las Islas Filipinas.

All rights reserved.

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

I

"We travel rapidly in these historical sketches. The reader

flies in his express train in a few minutes through a couple

of centuries. The centuries pass more slowly to those to

whom the years are doled out day by day. Institutions grow

and beneficently develop themselves, making their way into

the hearts of generations which are shorter-lived than they,

attracting love and respect, and winning loyal obedience;

and then as gradually forfeiting by their shortcomings

the allegiance which had been honorably gained in worthier

periods. We see wealth and greatness; we see corruption and

vice; and one seems to follow so close upon the other, that we

fancy they must have always co-existed. We look more steadily,

and we perceive long periods of time, in which there is first

a growth and then a decay, like what we perceive in a tree

of the forest."

FROUDE, _Annals of an English Abbey_.

Monasticism's record in the Philippines presents no new general fact

to the eye of history. The attempt to eliminate the eternal feminine

from her natural and normal sphere in the scheme of things there met

with the same certain and signal disaster that awaits every perversion

of human activity. Beginning with a band of zealous, earnest men,

sincere in their convictions, to whom the cause was all and their

personalities nothing, it there, as elsewhere, passed through its

usual cycle of usefulness, stagnation, corruption, and degeneration.

To the unselfish and heroic efforts of the early friars Spain

in large measure owed her dominion over the Philippine Islands

and the Filipinos a marked advance on the road to civilization and

nationality. In fact, after the dreams of sudden wealth from gold and

spices had faded, the islands were retained chiefly as a missionary

conquest and a stepping-stone to the broader fields of Asia, with

Manila as a depot for the Oriental trade. The records of those early

years are filled with tales of courage and heroism worthy of Spain's

proudest years, as the missionary fathers labored with unflagging

zeal in disinterested endeavor for the spread of the Faith and the

betterment of the condition of the Malays among whom they found

themselves. They won the confidence of the native peoples, gathered

them into settlements and villages, led them into the ways of peace,

and became their protectors, guides, and counselors.

In those times the cross and the sword went hand in hand, but in the

Philippines the latter was rarely needed or used. The lightness and

vivacity of the Spanish character, with its strain of Orientalism,

its fertility of resource in meeting new conditions, its adaptability

in dealing with the dwellers in warmer lands, all played their part in

this as in the other conquests. Only on occasions when some stubborn

resistance was met with, as in Manila and the surrounding country,

where the most advanced of the native peoples dwelt and where some of

the forms and beliefs of Islam had been established, was it necessary

to resort to violence to destroy the native leaders and replace them

with the missionary fathers. A few sallies by young Salcedo, the Cortez

of the Philippine conquest, with a company of the splendid infantry,

which was at that time the admiration and despair of martial Europe,

soon effectively exorcised any idea of resistance that even the boldest

and most intransigent of the native leaders might have entertained.

For the most part, no great persuasion was needed to turn a simple,

imaginative, fatalistic people from a few vague animistic deities

to the systematic iconology and the elaborate ritual of the Spanish

Church. An obscure _Bathala_ or a dim _Malyari_ was easily superseded

by or transformed into a clearly defined _Diós_, and in the case of

any especially tenacious "demon," he could without much difficulty

be merged into a Christian saint or devil. There was no organized

priesthood to be overcome, the primitive religious observances

consisting almost entirely of occasional orgies presided over by

an old woman, who filled the priestly offices of interpreter for

the unseen powers and chief eater at the sacrificial feast. With

their unflagging zeal, their organization, their elaborate forms

and ceremonies, the missionaries were enabled to win the confidence

of the natives, especially as the greater part of them learned the

local language and identified their lives with the communities under

their care. Accordingly, the people took kindly to their new teachers

and rulers, so that in less than a generation Spanish authority was

generally recognized in the settled portions of the Philippines,

and in the succeeding years the missionaries gradually extended this

area by forming settlements from among the wilder peoples, whom they

persuaded to abandon the more objectionable features of their old

roving, often predatory, life and to group themselves into towns and

villages "under the bell."

The tactics employed in the conquest and the subsequent behavior of

the conquerors were true to the old Spanish nature, so succinctly

characterized by a plain-spoken Englishman of Mary's reign, when the

war-cry of Castile encircled the globe and even hovered ominously

near the "sceptered isle," when in the intoxication of power character

stands out so sharply defined: "They be verye wyse and politicke, and

can, thorowe ther wysdome, reform and brydell theyr owne natures for

a tyme, and applye ther conditions to the manners of those men with

whom they meddell gladlye by friendshippe; whose mischievous maners

a man shall never know untyll he come under ther subjection; but then

shall he parfectlye parceve and fele them: for in dissimulations untyll

they have ther purposes, and afterwards in oppression and tyrannye,

when they can obtain them, they do exceed all other nations upon the

earthe." [1]

In the working out of this spirit, with all the indomitable courage

and fanatical ardor derived from the long contests with the Moors,

they reduced the native peoples to submission, but still not to the

galling yoke which they fastened upon the aborigines of America, to

make one Las Casas shine amid the horde of Pizarros. There was some

compulsory labor in timber-cutting and ship-building, with enforced

military service as rowers and soldiers for expeditions to the Moluccas

and the coasts of Asia, but nowhere the unspeakable atrocities which

in Mexico, Hispaniola, and South America drove mothers to strangle

their babes at birth and whole tribes to prefer self-immolation to the

living death in the mines and slave-pens. Quite differently from the

case in America, where entire islands and districts were depopulated,

to bring on later the curse of negro slavery, in the Philippines

the fact appears that the native population really increased and

the standard of living was raised under the stern, yet beneficent,

tutelage of the missionary fathers. The great distance and the

hardships of the journey precluded the coming of many irresponsible

adventurers from Spain and, fortunately for the native population,

no great mineral wealth was ever discovered in the Philippine Islands.

The system of government was, in its essential features, a simple

one. The missionary priests drew the inhabitants of the towns

and villages about themselves or formed new settlements, and with

profuse use of symbol and symbolism taught the people the Faith,

laying particular stress upon "the fear of God," as administered by

them, reconciling the people to their subjection by inculcating the

Christian virtues of patience and humility. When any recalcitrants

refused to accept the new order, or later showed an inclination to

break away from it, the military forces, acting usually under secret

directions from the padre, made raids in the disaffected parts with

all the unpitying atrocity the Spanish soldiery were ever capable of

displaying in their dealings with a weaker people. After sufficient

punishment had been inflicted and a wholesome fear inspired, the padre

very opportunely interfered in the natives' behalf, by which means

they were convinced that peace and security lay in submission to the

authorities, especially to the curate of their town or district. A

single example will suffice to make the method clear: not an isolated

instance but a typical case chosen from among the mass of records

left by the chief actors themselves.

Fray Domingo Perez, evidently a man of courage and conviction, for he

later lost his life in the work of which he wrote, was the Dominican

vicar on the Zambales coast when that Order temporarily took over the

district from the Recollects. In a report written for his superior in

1680 he outlines the method clearly: "In order that those whom we have

assembled in the three villages may persevere in their settlements,

the most efficacious fear and the one most suited to their nature is

that the Spaniards of the fort and presidio of Paynaven [2] of whom

they have a very great fear, may come very often to the said villages

and overrun the land, and penetrate even into their old recesses where

they formerly lived; and if perchance they should find anything planted

in the said recesses that they would destroy it and cut it down without

leaving them anything. And so that they may see the father protects

them, when the said Spaniards come to the village, the father opposes

them and takes the part of the Indians. But it is always necessary

in this matter for the soldiers to conquer, and the father is always

very careful always to inform the Spaniards by whom and where anything

is planted which it may be necessary to destroy, and that the edicts

which his Lordship, the governor, sent them be carried out .... But

at all events said Spaniards are to make no trouble for the Indians

whom they find in the villages, but rather must treat them well." [3]

This in 1680: the Dominican transcriber of the record in 1906 has

added a very illuminating note, revealing the immutability of the

system and showing that the rulers possessed in a superlative degree

the Bourbonesque trait of learning nothing and forgetting nothing:

"Even when I was a missionary to the heathens from 1882 to 1892,

I had occasion to observe the said policy, to inform the chief of

the fortress of the measures that he ought to take, and to make a

false show on the other side so that it might have no influence on

the fortress."

Thus it stands out in bold relief as a system built up and maintained

by fraud and force, bound in the course of nature to last only as

long as the deception could be carried on and the repressive force

kept up to sufficient strength. Its maintenance required that the

different sections be isolated from each other so that there could

be no growth toward a common understanding and coöperation, and its

permanence depended upon keeping the people ignorant and contented with

their lot, held under strict control by religious and political fear.

Yet it was a vast improvement over their old mode of life and their

condition was bettered as they grew up to such a system. Only with

the passing of the years and the increase of wealth and influence,

the ease and luxury invited by these, and the consequent corruption so

induced, with the insatiable longing ever for more wealth and greater

influence, did the poison of greed and grasping power enter the system

to work its insidious way into every part, slowly transforming the

beneficent institution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries

into an incubus weighing upon all the activities of the people in

the nineteenth, an unyielding bar to the development of the country,

a hideous anachronism in these modern times.

It must be remembered also that Spain, in the years following her

brilliant conquests of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, lost

strength and vigor through the corruption at home induced by the

unearned wealth that flowed into the mother country from the colonies,

and by the draining away of her best blood. Nor did her sons ever

develop that economic spirit which is the permanent foundation of

all empire, but they let the wealth of the Indies flow through their

country, principally to London and Amsterdam, there to form in more

practical hands the basis of the British and Dutch colonial empires.

The priest and the soldier were supreme, so her best sons took up

either the cross or the sword to maintain her dominion in the distant

colonies, a movement which, long continued, spelled for her a form of

national suicide. The soldier expended his strength and generally laid

down his life on alien soil, leaving no fit successor of his own stock

to carry on the work according to his standards. The priest under the

celibate system, in its better days left no offspring at all and in

the days of its corruption none bred and reared under the influences

that make for social and political progress. The dark chambers of the

Inquisition stifled all advance in thought, so the civilization and

the culture of Spain, as well as her political system, settled into

rigid forms to await only the inevitable process of stagnation and

decay. In her proudest hour an old soldier, who had lost one of his

hands fighting her battles against the Turk at Lepanto, employed the

other in writing the masterpiece of her literature, which is really

a caricature of the nation.

There is much in the career of Spain that calls to mind the dazzling

beauty of her "dark-glancing daughters," with its early bloom, its

startling--almost morbid--brilliance, and its premature decay. Rapid

and brilliant was her rise, gradual and inglorious her steady decline,

from the bright morning when the banners of Castile and Aragon were

flung triumphantly from the battlements of the Alhambra, to the short

summer, not so long gone, when at Cavite and Santiago with swift,

decisive havoc the last ragged remnants of the once world-dominating

power were blown into space and time, to hover disembodied there, a

lesson and a warning to future generations. Whatever her final place in

the records of mankind, whether as the pioneer of modern civilization

or the buccaneer of the nations or, as would seem most likely, a

goodly mixture of both, she has at least--with the exception only

of her great mother, Rome--furnished the most instructive lessons in

political pathology yet recorded, and the advice to students of world

progress to familiarize themselves with her history is even more apt

today than when it first issued from the encyclopedic mind of Macaulay

nearly a century ago. Hardly had she reached the zenith of her power

when the disintegration began, and one by one her brilliant conquests

dropped away, to leave her alone in her faded splendor, with naught but

her vaunting pride left, another "Niobe of nations." In the countries

more in contact with the trend of civilization and more susceptible

to revolutionary influences from the mother country this separation

came from within, while in the remoter parts the archaic and outgrown

system dragged along until a stronger force from without destroyed it.

Nowhere was the crystallization of form and principle more pronounced

than in religious life, which fastened upon the mother country a

deadening weight that hampered all progress, and in the colonies,

notably in the Philippines, virtually converted her government into

a hagiarchy that had its face toward the past and either could not

or would not move with the current of the times. So, when "the shot

heard round the world," the declaration of humanity's right to be and

to become, in its all-encircling sweep, reached the lands controlled

by her it was coldly received and blindly rejected by the governing

powers, and there was left only the slower, subtler, but none the

less sure, process of working its way among the people to burst in

time in rebellion and the destruction of the conservative forces that

would repress it.

In the opening years of the nineteenth century the friar orders in the

Philippines had reached the apogee of their power and usefulness. Their

influence was everywhere felt and acknowledged, while the country

still prospered under the effects of the vigorous and progressive

administrations of Anda and Vargas in the preceding century. Native

levies had fought loyally under Spanish leadership against Dutch

and British invaders, or in suppressing local revolts among their

own people, which were always due to some specific grievance, never

directed definitely against the Spanish sovereignty. The Philippines

were shut off from contact with any country but Spain, and even this

communication was restricted and carefully guarded. There was an

elaborate central government which, however, hardly touched the life

of the native peoples, who were guided and governed by the parish

priests, each town being in a way an independent entity.

Of this halcyon period, just before the process of disintegration

began, there has fortunately been left a record which may be

characterized as the most notable Spanish literary production

relating to the Philippines, being the calm, sympathetic, judicial

account of one who had spent his manhood in the work there and who,

full of years and experience, sat down to tell the story of their

life. [4] In it there are no puerile whinings, no querulous curses

that tropical Malays do not order their lives as did the people of

the Spanish village where he may have been reared, no selfish laments

of ingratitude over blessings unasked and only imperfectly understood

by the natives, no fatuous self-deception as to the real conditions,

but a patient consideration of the difficulties encountered, the good

accomplished, and the unavoidable evils incident to any human work. The

country and the people, too, are described with the charming simplicity

of the eyes that see clearly, the brain that ponders deeply, and the

heart that beats sympathetically. Through all the pages of his account

runs the quiet strain of peace and contentment, of satisfaction with

the existing order, for he had looked upon the creation and saw that

it was good. There is "neither haste, nor hate, nor anger," but the

deliberate recital of the facts warmed and illumined by the geniality

of a soul to whom age and experience had brought, not a sour cynicism,

but the mellowing influence of a ripened philosophy. He was such

an old man as may fondly be imagined walking through the streets of

Parañaque in stately benignity amid the fear and respect of the brown

people over whom he watched.

But in all his chronicle there is no suggestion of anything more to

hope for, anything beyond. Beautiful as the picture is, it is that of

a system which had reached maturity: a condition of stagnation, not

of growth. In less than a decade, the terrific convulsions in European

politics made themselves felt even in the remote Philippines, and then

began the gradual drawing away of the people from their rulers--blind

gropings and erratic wanderings at first, but nevertheless persistent

and vigorous tendencies.

The first notable influence was the admission of representatives

for the Philippines into the Spanish Cortes under the revolutionary

governments and the abolition of the trade monopoly with Mexico. The

last galleon reached Manila in 1815, and soon foreign commercial

interests were permitted, in a restricted way, to enter the

country. Then with the separation of Mexico and the other American

colonies from Spain a more marked change was brought about in that

direct communication was established with the mother country, and

the absolutism of the hagiarchy first questioned by the numbers of

Peninsular Spaniards who entered the islands to trade, some even

to settle and rear families there. These also affected the native

population in the larger centers by the spread of their ideas, which

were not always in conformity with those that for several centuries

the friars had been inculcating into their wards. Moreover, there

was a not-inconsiderable portion of the population, sprung from the

friars themselves, who were eager to adopt the customs and ideas of

the Spanish immigrants.

The suppression of many of the monasteries in Spain in 1835 caused

a large influx of the disestablished monks into the Philippines in

search for a haven, and a home, thus bringing about a conflict with

the native clergy, who were displaced from their best holdings to

provide berths for the newcomers. At the same time, the increase of

education among the native priests brought the natural demand for

more equitable treatment by the Spanish friar, so insistent that it

even broke out into open rebellion in 1843 on the part of a young

Tagalog who thought himself aggrieved in this respect.

Thus the struggle went on, with stagnation above and some growth below,

so that the governors were ever getting further away from the governed,

and for such a movement there is in the course of nature but one

inevitable result, especially when outside influences are actively at

work penetrating the social system and making for better things. Among

these influences four cumulative ones may be noted: the spread of

journalism, the introduction of steamships into the Philippines,

the return of the Jesuits, and the opening of the Suez Canal.

The printing-press entered the islands with the conquest, but its use

had been strictly confined to religious works until about the middle of

the past century, when there was a sudden awakening and within a few

years five journals were being published. In 1848 appeared the first

regular newspaper of importance, _El Diario de Manila_, and about a

decade later the principal organ of the Spanish-Filipino population,

_El Comercio_, which, with varying vicissitudes, has continued down

to the present. While rigorously censored, both politically and

religiously, and accessible to only an infinitesimal portion of the

people, they still performed the service of letting a few rays of

light into the Cimmerian intellectual gloom of the time and place.

With the coming of steam navigation communication between the

different parts of the islands was facilitated and trade encouraged,

with all that such a change meant in the way of breaking up the old

isolation and tending to a common understanding. Spanish power, too,

was for the moment more firmly established, and Moro piracy in Luzon

and the Bisayan Islands, which had been so great a drawback to the

development of the country, was forever ended.

The return of the Jesuits produced two general results tending to

dissatisfaction with the existing order. To them was assigned the

missionary field of Mindanao, which meant the displacement of the

Recollect Fathers in the missions there, and for these other berths

had to be found. Again the native clergy were the losers in that they

had to give up their best parishes in Luzon, especially around Manila

and Cavite, so the breach was further widened and the soil sown with

discontent. But more far-reaching than this immediate result was

the educational movement inaugurated by the Jesuits. The native,

already feeling the vague impulses from without and stirred by the

growing restlessness of the times, here saw a new world open before

him. A considerable portion of the native population in the larger

centers, who had shared in the economic progress of the colony, were

enabled to look beyond their daily needs and to afford their children

an opportunity for study and advancement--a condition and a need met

by the Jesuits for a time.

With the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 communication with the

mother country became cheaper, quicker, surer, so that large numbers

of Spaniards, many of them in sympathy with the republican movements

at home, came to the Philippines in search of fortunes and generally

left half-caste families who had imbibed their ideas. Native boys

who had already felt the intoxication of such learning as the schools

of Manila afforded them began to dream of greater wonders in Spain,

now that the journey was possible for them. So began the definite

movements that led directly to the disintegration of the friar régime.

In the same year occurred the revolution in the mother country,

which had tired of the old corrupt despotism. Isabella II was driven

into exile and the country left to waver about uncertainly for several

years, passing through all the stages of government from red radicalism

to absolute conservatism, finally adjusting itself to the middle course

of constitutional monarchism. During the effervescent and ephemeral

republic there was sent to the Philippines a governor who set to work

to modify the old system and establish a government more in harmony

with modern ideas and more democratic in form. His changes were hailed

with delight by the growing class of Filipinos who were striving for

more consideration in their own country, and who, in their enthusiasm

and the intoxication of the moment, perhaps became more radical than

was safe under the conditions--surely too radical for their religious

guides watching and waiting behind the veil of the temple.

In January, 1872, an uprising occurred in the naval arsenal at Cavite,

with a Spanish non-commissioned officer as one of the leaders. From

the meager evidence now obtainable, this would seem to have been

purely a local mutiny over the service questions of pay and treatment,

but in it the friars saw their opportunity. It was blazoned forth,

with all the wild panic that was to characterize the actions of the

governing powers from that time on, as the premature outbreak of

a general insurrection under the leadership of the native clergy,

and rigorous repressive measures were demanded. Three native

priests, notable for their popularity among their own people, one an

octogenarian and the other two young canons of the Manila Cathedral,

were summarily garroted, along with the renegade Spanish officer

who had participated in the mutiny. No record of any trial of these

priests has ever been brought to light. The Archbishop, himself a

secular [5] clergyman, stoutly refused to degrade them from their

holy office, and they wore their sacerdotal robes at the execution,

which was conducted in a hurried, fearful manner. At the same time

a number of young Manilans who had taken conspicuous part in the

"liberal" demonstrations were deported to the Ladrone Islands or to

remote islands of the Philippine group itself.

This was the beginning of the end. Yet there immediately followed

the delusive calm which ever precedes the fatal outburst, lulling

those marked for destruction to a delusive security. The two decades

following were years of quiet, unobtrusive growth, during which

the Philippine Islands made the greatest economic progress in their

history. But this in itself was preparing the final catastrophe, for

if there be any fact well established in human experience it is that

with economic development the power of organized religion begins to

wane--the rise of the merchant spells the decline of the priest. A

sordid change, from masses and mysteries to sugar and shoes, this is

often said to be, but it should be noted that the epochs of greatest

economic activity have been those during which the generality of

mankind have lived fuller and freer lives, and above all that in such

eras the finest intellects and the grandest souls have been developed.

Nor does an institution that has been slowly growing for three

centuries, molding the very life and fiber of the people, disintegrate

without a violent struggle, either in its own constitution or in the

life of the people trained under it. Not only the ecclesiastical but

also the social and political system of the country was controlled by

the religious orders, often silently and secretly, but none the less

effectively. This is evident from the ceaseless conflict that went on

between the religious orders and the Spanish political administrators,

who were at every turn thwarted in their efforts to keep the government

abreast of the times.

The shock of the affair of 1872 had apparently stunned the Filipinos,

but it had at the same time brought them to the parting of the ways and

induced a vague feeling that there was something radically wrong, which

could only be righted by a closer union among themselves. They began

to consider that their interests and those of the governing powers were

not the same. In these feelings of distrust toward the friars they were

stimulated by the great numbers of immigrant Spaniards who were then

entering the country, many of whom had taken part in the republican

movements at home and who, upon the restoration of the monarchy,

no doubt thought it safer for them to be at as great a distance as

possible from the throne. The young Filipinos studying in Spain came

from different parts of the islands, and by their association there

in a foreign land were learning to forget their narrow sectionalism;

hence the way was being prepared for some concerted action. Thus,

aided and encouraged by the anti-clerical Spaniards in the mother

country, there was growing up a new generation of native leaders,

who looked toward something better than the old system.

It is with this period in the history of the country--the author's

boyhood--that the story of _Noli Me Tangere_ deals. Typical scenes and

characters are sketched from life with wonderful accuracy, and the

picture presented is that of a master-mind, who knew and loved his

subject. Terror and repression were the order of the day, with ever

a growing unrest in the higher circles, while the native population

at large seemed to be completely _cowed_--"brutalized" is the term

repeatedly used by Rizal in his political essays. Spanish writers of

the period, observing only the superficial movements,--some of which

were indeed fantastical enough, for

"they,

Who in oppression's darkness caved have dwelt,

They are not eagles, nourished with the day;

What marvel, then, at times, if they mistake their way?"

--and not heeding the currents at work below, take great delight in

ridiculing the pretensions of the young men seeking advancement,

while they indulge in coarse ribaldry over the wretched condition

of the great mass of the "Indians." The author, however, himself a

"miserable Indian," vividly depicts the unnatural conditions and

dominant characters produced under the outworn system of fraud and

force, at the same time presenting his people as living, feeling,

struggling individuals, with all the frailties of human nature and all

the possibilities of mankind, either for good or evil; incidentally

he throws into marked contrast the despicable depreciation used by

the Spanish writers in referring to the Filipinos, making clear the

application of the self-evident proposition that no ordinary human

being in the presence of superior force can very well conduct himself

as a man unless he be treated as such.

The friar orders, deluded by their transient triumph and secure in

their pride of place, became more arrogant, more domineering than

ever. In the general administration the political rulers were at every

turn thwarted, their best efforts frustrated, and if they ventured

too far their own security threatened; for in the three-cornered

wrangle which lasted throughout the whole of the Spanish domination,

the friar orders had, in addition to the strength derived from their

organization and their wealth, the Damoclean weapon of control over the

natives to hang above the heads of both governor and archbishop. The

curates in the towns, always the real rulers, became veritable despots,

so that no voice dared to raise itself against them, even in the midst

of conditions which the humblest _indio_ was beginning to feel dumbly

to be perverted and unnatural, and that, too, after three centuries

of training under the system that he had ever been taught to accept as

"the will of God."

The friars seemed long since to have forgotten those noble aims

that had meant so much to the founders and early workers of their

orders, if indeed the great majority of those of the later day had

ever realized the meaning of their office, for the Spanish writers of

the time delight in characterizing them as the meanest of the Spanish

peasantry, when not something worse, who had been "lassoed," taught a

few ritualistic prayers, and shipped to the Philippines to be placed

in isolated towns as lords and masters of the native population, with

all the power and prestige over a docile people that the sacredness of

their holy office gave them. These writers treat the matter lightly,

seeing in it rather a huge joke on the "miserable Indians," and

give the friars great credit for "patriotism," a term which in this

connection they dragged from depth to depth until it quite aptly fitted

Dr. Johnson's famous definition, "the last refuge of a scoundrel."

In their conduct the religious corporations, both as societies and as

individuals, must be estimated according to their own standards--the

application of any other criterion would be palpably unfair. They

undertook to hold the native in subjection, to regulate the essential

activities of his life according to their ideas, so upon them

must fall the responsibility for the conditions finally attained:

to destroy the freedom of the subject and then attempt to blame him

for his conduct is a paradox into which the learned men often fell,

perhaps inadvertently through their deductive logic. They endeavored

to shape the lives of their Malay wards not only in this existence

but also in the next. Their vows were poverty, chastity, and obedience.

The vow of poverty was early relegated to the limbo of neglect. Only a

few years after the founding of Manila royal decrees began to issue on

the subject of complaints received by the King over the usurpation of

lands on the part of the priests. Using the same methods so familiar in

the heyday of the institution of monasticism in Europe--pious gifts,

deathbed bequests, pilgrims' offerings--the friar orders gradually

secured the richest of the arable lands in the more thickly settled

portions of the Philippines, notably the part of Luzon occupied by

the Tagalogs. Not always, however, it must in justice be recorded,

were such doubtful means resorted to, for there were instances where

the missionary was the pioneer, gathering about himself a band of

devoted natives and plunging into the unsettled parts to build up

a town with its fields around it, which would later become a friar

estate. With the accumulated incomes from these estates and the fees

for religious observances that poured into their treasuries, the

orders in their nature of perpetual corporations became the masters of

the situation, the lords of the country. But this condition was not

altogether objectionable; it was in the excess of their greed that

they went astray, for the native peoples had been living under this

system through generations and not until they began to feel that they

were not receiving fair treatment did they question the authority of

a power which not only secured them a peaceful existence in this life

but also assured them eternal felicity in the next.

With only the shining exceptions that are produced in any system, no

matter how false its premises or how decadent it may become, to uphold

faith in the intrinsic soundness of human nature, the vow of chastity

was never much more than a myth. Through the tremendous influence

exerted over a fanatically religious people, who implicitly followed

the teachings of the reverend fathers, once their confidence had

been secured, the curate was seldom to be gainsaid in his desires. By

means of the secret influence in the confessional and the more open

political power wielded by him, the fairest was his to command,

and the favored one and her people looked upon the choice more as an

honor than otherwise, for besides the social standing that it gave her

there was the proud prospect of becoming the mother of children who

could claim kinship with the dominant race. The curate's "companion"

or the sacristan's wife was a power in the community, her family was

raised to a place of importance and influence among their own people,

while she and her ecclesiastical offspring were well cared for. On

the death or removal of the curate, it was almost invariably found

that she had been provided with a husband or protector and a not

inconsiderable amount of property--an arrangement rather appealing

to a people among whom the means of living have ever been so insecure.

That this practise was not particularly offensive to the people among

whom they dwelt may explain the situation, but to claim that it excuses

the friars approaches dangerously close to casuistry. Still, as long as

this arrangement was decently and moderately carried out, there seems

to have been no great objection, nor from a worldly point of view,

with all the conditions considered, could there be much. But the old

story of excess, of unbridled power turned toward bad ends, again

recurs, at the same time that the ideas brought in by the Spaniards

who came each year in increasing numbers and the principles observed

by the young men studying in Europe cast doubt upon the fitness of

such a state of affairs. As they approached their downfall, like all

mankind, the friars became more open, more insolent, more shameless,

in their conduct.

The story of Maria Clara, as told in _Noli Me Tangere_, is by no means

an exaggerated instance, but rather one of the few clean enough to

bear the light, and her fate, as depicted in the epilogue, is said

to be based upon an actual occurrence with which the author must have

been familiar.

The vow of obedience--whether considered as to the Pope, their

highest religious authority, or to the King of Spain, their political

liege--might not always be so callously disregarded, but it could be

evaded and defied. From the Vatican came bull after bull, from the

Escorial decree after decree, only to be archived in Manila, sometimes

after a hollow pretense of compliance. A large part of the records of

Spanish domination is taken up with the wearisome quarrels that went

on between the Archbishop, representing the head of the Church, and

the friar orders, over the questions of the episcopal visitation and

the enforcement of the provisions of the Council of Trent relegating

the monks to their original status of missionaries, with the friars

invariably victorious in their contentions. Royal decrees ordering

inquiries into the titles to the estates of the men of poverty and

those providing for the education of the natives in Spanish were

merely sneered at and left to molder in harmless quiet. Not without

good grounds for his contention, the friar claimed that the Spanish

dominion over the Philippines depended upon him, and he therefore

confidently set himself up as the best judge of how that dominion

should be maintained.

Thus there are presented in the Philippines of the closing quarter of

the century just past the phenomena so frequently met with in modern

societies, so disheartening to the people who must drag out their lives

under them, of an old system which has outworn its usefulness and is

being called into question, with forces actively at work disintegrating

it, yet with the unhappy folk bred and reared under it unprepared for

a new order of things. The old faith was breaking down, its forms

and beliefs, once so full of life and meaning, were being sharply

examined, doubt and suspicion were the order of the day. Moreover,

it must ever be borne in mind that in the Philippines this unrest,

except in the parts where the friars were the landlords, was not

general among the people, the masses of whom were still sunk in their

"loved Egyptian night," but affected only a very small proportion of

the population--for the most part young men who were groping their

way toward something better, yet without any very clearly conceived

idea of what that better might be, and among whom was to be found the

usual sprinkling of "sunshine patriots" and omnipresent opportunists

ready for any kind of trouble that will afford them a chance to rise.

Add to the apathy of the masses dragging out their vacant lives amid

the shadows of religious superstition and to the unrest of the few,

the fact that the orders were in absolute control of the political

machinery of the country, with the best part of the agrarian wealth

amortized in their hands; add also the ever-present jealousies, petty

feuds, and racial hatreds, for which Manila and the Philippines,

with their medley of creeds and races, offer such a fertile field,

all fostered by the governing class for the maintenance of the old

Machiavelian principle of "divide and rule," and the sum is about

the most miserable condition under which any portion of mankind ever

tried to fulfill nature's inexorable laws of growth.

II

And third came she who gives dark creeds their power,

Silabbat-paramasa, sorceress,

Draped fair in many lands as lowly Faith,

But ever juggling souls with rites and prayers;

The keeper of those keys which lock up Hells

And open Heavens. "Wilt thou dare," she said,

"Put by our sacred books, dethrone our gods,

Unpeople all the temples, shaking down

That law which feeds the priests and props the realm?"

But Buddha answered, "What thou bidd'st me keep

Is form which passes, but the free Truth stands;

Get thee unto thy darkness."

SIR EDWIN ARNOLD, _The Light of Asia_.

"Ah, simple people, how little do you know the blessing that you

enjoy! Neither hunger, nor nakedness, nor inclemency of the weather

troubles you. With the payment of seven reals per year, you remain free

of contributions. You do not have to close your houses with bolts. You

do not fear that the district troopers will come in to lay waste your

fields, and trample you under foot at your own firesides. You call

'father' the one who is in command over you. Perhaps there will come

a time when you will be more civilized, and you will break out in

revolution; and you will wake terrified, at the tumult of the riots,

and will see blood flowing through these quiet fields, and gallows

and guillotines erected in these squares, which never yet have seen an

execution." [6] Thus moralized a Spanish traveler in 1842, just as that

_dolce far niente_ was drawing to its close. Already far-seeing men had

begun to raise in the Spanish parliament the question of the future of

the Philippines, looking toward some definite program for their care

under modern conditions and for the adjustment of their relations with

the mother country. But these were mere Cassandra-voices--the horologe

of time was striking for Rome's successor, as it did for Rome herself.

Just where will come the outbreak after three centuries of

mind-repression and soul-distortion, of forcing a growing subject

into the strait-jacket of medieval thought and action, of natural

selection reversed by the constant elimination of native initiative and

leadership, is indeed a curious study. That there will be an outbreak

somewhere is as certain as that the plant will grow toward the light,

even under the most unfavorable conditions, for man's nature is but

the resultant of eternal forces that ceaselessly and irresistibly

interplay about and upon him, and somewhere this resultant will

express itself in thought or deed.

After three centuries of Spanish ecclesiastical domination in the

Philippines, it was to be expected that the wards would turn against

their mentors the methods that had been used upon them, nor is it

especially remarkable that there was a decided tendency in some parts

to revert to primitive barbarism, but that concurrently a creative

genius--a bard or seer--should have been developed among a people

who, as a whole, have hardly passed through the clan or village

stage of society, can be regarded as little less than a psychological

phenomenon, and provokes the perhaps presumptuous inquiry as to whether

there may not be some things about our common human nature that the

learned doctors have not yet included in their anthropometric diagrams.

On the western shore of the Lake of Bay in the heart of the Philippines

clusters the village of Kalamba, first established by the Jesuit

Fathers in the early days of the conquest, and upon their expulsion

in 1767 taken over by the Crown, which later transferred it to the

Dominicans, under whose care the fertile fields about it became one

of the richest of the friar estates. It can hardly be called a town,

even for the Philippines, but is rather a market-village, set as it

is at the outlet of the rich country of northern Batangas on the

open waterway to Manila and the outside world. Around it flourish

the green rice-fields, while Mount Makiling towers majestically near

in her moods of cloud and sunshine, overlooking the picturesque

curve of the shore and the rippling waters of the lake. Shadowy

to the eastward gleam the purple crests of Banahao and Cristobal,

and but a few miles to the southwestward dim-thundering, seething,

earth-rocking Taal mutters and moans of the world's birth-throes. It

is the center of a region rich in native lore and legend, as it sleeps

through the dusty noons when the cacao leaves droop with the heat and

dreams through the silvery nights, waking twice or thrice a week to

the endless babble and ceaseless chatter of an Oriental market where

the noisy throngs make of their trading as much a matter of pleasure

and recreation as of business.

Directly opposite this market-place, in a house facing the village

church, there was born in 1861 into the already large family of one

of the more prosperous tenants on the Dominican estate a boy who was

to combine in his person the finest traits of the Oriental character

with the best that Spanish and European culture could add, on whom

would fall the burden of his people's woes to lead him over the _via

dolorosa_ of struggle and sacrifice, ending in his own destruction

amid the crumbling ruins of the system whose disintegration he himself

had done so much to compass.

José Rizal-Mercado y Alonso, as his name emerges from the confusion

of Filipino nomenclature, was of Malay extraction, with some distant

strains of Spanish and Chinese blood. His genealogy reveals several

persons remarkable for intellect and independence of character, notably

a Philippine Eloise and Abelard, who, drawn together by their common

enthusiasm for study and learning, became his maternal grandparents, as

well as a great-uncle who was a traveler and student and who directed

the boy's early studies. Thus from the beginning his training was

exceptional, while his mind was stirred by the trouble already brewing

in his community, and from the earliest hours of consciousness he saw

about him the wrongs and injustices which overgrown power will ever

develop in dealing with a weaker subject. One fact of his childhood,

too, stands out clearly, well worthy of record: his mother seems to

have been a woman of more than ordinary education for the time and

place, and, pleased with the boy's quick intelligence, she taught him

to read Spanish from a copy of the Vulgate in that language, which

she had somehow managed to secure and keep in her possession--the

old, old story of the Woman and the Book, repeated often enough under

strange circumstances, but under none stranger than these. The boy's

father was well-to-do, so he was sent at the age of eight to study

in the new Jesuit school in Manila, not however before he had already

inspired some awe in his simple neighbors by the facility with which

he composed verses in his native tongue.

He began his studies in a private house while waiting for an

opportunity to enter the Ateneo, as the Jesuit school is called,

and while there he saw one of his tutors, Padre Burgos, haled to

an ignominious death on the garrote as a result of the affair of

1872. This made a deep impression on his childish mind and, in fact,

seems to have been one of the principal factors in molding his ideas

and shaping his career. That the effect upon him was lasting and that

his later judgment confirmed him in the belief that a great injustice

had been done, are shown by the fact that his second important work,

_El Filibusterismo_, written about 1891, and miscalled by himself a

"novel," for it is really a series of word-paintings constituting a

terrific arraignment of the whole régime, was dedicated to the three

priests executed in 1872, in these words: "Religion, in refusing

to degrade you, has placed in doubt the crime imputed to you; the

government, in surrounding your case with mystery and shadow, gives

reason for belief in some error, committed in fatal moments; and all

the Philippines, in venerating your memory and calling you martyrs,

in no way acknowledges your guilt." The only answer he ever received

to this was eight Remington bullets fired into his back.

In the Ateneo he quickly attracted attention and became a general

favorite by his application to his studies, the poetic fervor with

which he entered into all the exercises of religious devotion, and

the gentleness of his character. He was from the first considered

"peculiar," for so the common mind regards everything that fails to fit

the old formulas, being of a rather dreamy and reticent disposition,

more inclined to reading Spanish romances than joining in the games of

his schoolmates. And of all the literatures that could be placed in

the hands of an imaginative child, what one would be more productive

in a receptive mind of a fervid love of life and home and country and

all that men hold dear, than that of the musical language of Castile,

with its high coloring and passionate character?

His activities were varied, for, in addition to his regular studies,

he demonstrated considerable skill in wood-carving and wax-modeling,

and during this period won several prizes for poetical compositions

in Spanish, which, while sometimes juvenile in form and following

closely after Spanish models, reveal at times flashes of thought and

turns of expression that show distinct originality; even in these

early compositions there is that plaintive undertone, that minor

chord of sadness, which pervades all his poems, reaching its fullest

measure of pathos in the verses written in his death-cell. He received

a bachelor's degree according to the Spanish system in 1877, but

continued advanced studies in agriculture at the Ateneo, at the same

time that he was pursuing the course in philosophy in the Dominican

University of Santo Tomas, where in 1879 he startled the learned

doctors by a reference in a prize poem to the Philippines as his

"patria," fatherland. This political heresy on the part of a native

of the islands was given no very serious attention at the time, being

looked upon as the vagary of a schoolboy, but again in the following

year, by what seems a strange fatality, he stirred the resentment of

the friars, especially the Dominicans, by winning over some of their

number the first prize in a literary contest celebrated in honor of

the author of _Don Quixote_.

The archaic instruction in Santo Tomas soon disgusted him and led to

disagreements with the instructors, and he turned to Spain. Plans

for his journey and his stay there had to be made with the utmost

caution, for it would hardly have fared well with his family had

it become known that the son of a tenant on an estate which was a

part of the University endowment was studying in Europe. He reached

Spanish territory first in Barcelona, the hotbed of radicalism,

where he heard a good deal of revolutionary talk, which, however,

seems to have made but little impression upon him, for throughout

his entire career breadth of thought and strength of character are

revealed in his consistent opposition to all forms of violence.

In Madrid he pursued the courses in medicine and philosophy, but a

fact of even more consequence than his proficiency in his regular

work was his persistent study of languages and his omnivorous

reading. He was associated with the other Filipinos who were working

in a somewhat spectacular way, misdirected rather than led by what

may be styled the Spanish liberals, for more considerate treatment of

the Philippines. But while he was among them he was not of them, as

his studious habits and reticent disposition would hardly have made

him a favorite among those who were enjoying the broader and gayer

life there. Moreover, he soon advanced far beyond them in thought by

realizing that they were beginning at the wrong end of the labor,

for even at that time he seems to have caught, by what must almost

be looked upon as an inspiration of genius, since there was nothing

apparent in his training that would have suggested it, the realization

of the fact that hope for his people lay in bettering their condition,

that any real benefit must begin with the benighted folk at home,

that the introduction of reforms for which they were unprepared would

be useless, even dangerous to them. This was not at all the popular

idea among his associates and led to serious disagreements with their

leaders, for it was the way of toil and sacrifice without any of the

excitement and glamour that came from drawing up magnificent plans

and sending them back home with appeals for funds to carry on the

propaganda--for the most part banquets and entertainments to Spain's

political leaders.

His views, as revealed in his purely political writings, may be

succinctly stated, for he had that faculty of expression which never

leaves any room for doubt as to the meaning. His people had a natural

right to grow and to develop, and any obstacles to such growth and

development were to be removed. He realized that the masses of his

countrymen were sunk deep in poverty and ignorance, cringing and

crouching before political authority, crawling and groveling before

religious superstition, but to him this was no subject for jest

or indifferent neglect--it was a serious condition which should be

ameliorated, and hope lay in working into the inert social mass the

leaven of conscious individual effort toward the development of a

distinctive, responsible personality. He was profoundly appreciative

of all the good that Spain had done, but saw in this no inconsistency

with the desire that this gratitude might be given cause to be ever

on the increase, thereby uniting the Philippines with the mother

country by the firm bonds of common ideas and interests, for his

earlier writings breathe nothing but admiration, respect, and loyalty

for Spain and her more advanced institutions. The issue was clear to

him and he tried to keep it so.

It was indeed administrative myopia, induced largely by blind greed,

which allowed the friar orders to confuse the objections to their

repressive system with an attack upon Spanish sovereignty, thereby

dragging matters from bad to worse, to engender ill feeling and finally

desperation. This narrow, selfish policy had about as much soundness

in it as the idea upon which it was based, so often brought forward

with what looks very suspiciously like a specious effort to cover

mental indolence with a glittering generality, "that the Filipino is

only a grown-up child and needs a strong paternal government," an idea

which entirely overlooks the natural fact that when an impressionable

subject comes within the influence of a stronger force from a higher

civilization he is very likely to remain a child--perhaps a stunted

one--as long as he is treated as such. There is about as much sense

and justice in such logic as there would be in that of keeping a babe

confined in swaddling-bands and then blaming it for not knowing how to

walk. No creature will remain a healthy child forever, but, as Spain

learned to her bitter cost, will be very prone, as the parent grows

decrepit and it begins to feel its strength, to prove a troublesome

subject to handle, thereby reversing the natural law suggested by the

comparison, and bringing such Sancho-Panza statecraft to flounder at

last through as hopeless confusion to as absurd a conclusion as his

own island government.

Rizal was not one of those rabid, self-seeking revolutionists who

would merely overthrow the government and maintain the old system

with themselves in the privileged places of the former rulers, nor

is he to be classed among the misguided enthusiasts who by their

intemperate demands and immoderate conduct merely strengthen the

hands of those in power. He realized fully that the restrictions

under which the people had become accustomed to order their lives

should be removed gradually as they advanced under suitable guidance

and became capable of adjusting themselves to the new and better

conditions. They should take all the good offered, from any source,

especially that suited to their nature, which they could properly

assimilate. No great patience was ever exhibited by him toward those

of his countrymen--the most repulsive characters in his stories are

such--who would make of themselves mere apes and mimes, decorating

themselves with a veneer of questionable alien characteristics, but

with no personality or stability of their own, presenting at best

a spectacle to make devils laugh and angels weep, lacking even the

hothouse product's virtue of being good to look upon.

Reduced to a definite form, the wish of the more thoughtful in the

new generation of Filipino leaders that was growing up was that the

Philippine Islands be made a province of Spain with representation in

the Cortes and the concomitant freedom of expression and criticism. All

that was directly asked was some substantial participation in the

management of local affairs, and the curtailment of the arbitrary power

of petty officials, especially of the friar curates, who constituted

the chief obstacle to the education and development of the people.

The friar orders were, however, all-powerful, not only in the

Philippines, but also in Madrid, where they were not chary of making

use of a part of their wealth to maintain their influence. The

efforts of the Filipinos in Spain, while closely watched, do not

seem to have been given any very serious attention, for the Spanish

authorities no doubt realized that as long as the young men stayed

in Madrid writing manifestoes in a language which less than one

per cent of their countrymen could read and spending their money

on members of the Cortes, there could be little danger of trouble

in the Philippines. Moreover, the Spanish ministers themselves

appear to have been in sympathy with the more moderate wishes of

the Filipinos, a fact indicated by the number of changes ordered

from time to time in the Philippine administration, but they were

powerless before the strength and local influence of the religious

orders. So matters dragged their weary way along until there was an

unexpected and startling development, a David-Goliath contest, and

certainly no one but a genius could have polished the "smooth stone"

that was to smite the giant.

It is said that the idea of writing a novel depicting conditions in

his native land first came to Rizal from a perusal of Eugene Sue's

_The Wandering Jew_, while he was a student in Madrid, although the

model for the greater part of it is plainly the delectable sketches

in _Don Quixote_, for the author himself possessed in a remarkable

degree that Cervantic touch which raises the commonplace, even the

mean, into the highest regions of art. Not, however, until he had

spent some time in Paris continuing his medical studies, and later in

Germany, did anything definite result. But in 1887 _Noli Me Tangere_

was printed in Berlin, in an establishment where the author is said

to have worked part of his time as a compositor in order to defray

his expenses while he continued his studies. A limited edition was

published through the financial aid extended by a Filipino associate,

and sent to Hongkong, thence to be surreptitiously introduced into

the Philippines.

_Noli Me Tangere_ ("Touch Me Not") at the time the work was written had

a peculiar fitness as a title. Not only was there an apt suggestion

of a comparison with the common flower of that name, but the term

is also applied in pathology to a malignant cancer which affects

every bone and tissue in the body, and that this latter was in the

author's mind would appear from the dedication and from the summing-up

of the Philippine situation in the final conversation between Ibarra

and Elias. But in a letter written to a friend in Paris at the time,

the author himself says that it was taken from the Gospel scene where

the risen Savior appears to the Magdalene, to whom He addresses these

words, a scene that has been the subject of several notable paintings.

In this connection it is interesting to note what he himself thought of

the work, and his frank statement of what he had tried to accomplish,

made just as he was publishing it: "_Noli Me Tangere_, an expression

taken from the Gospel of St. Luke, [7] means _touch me not_. The

book contains things of which no one up to the present time has

spoken, for they are so sensitive that they have never suffered

themselves to be touched by any one whomsoever. For my own part, I

have attempted to do what no one else has been willing to do: I have

dared to answer the calumnies that have for centuries been heaped

upon us and our country. I have written of the social condition and

the life, of our beliefs, our hopes, our longings, our complaints,

and our sorrows; I have unmasked the hypocrisy which, under the cloak

of religion, has come among us to impoverish and to brutalize us,

I have distinguished the true religion from the false, from the

superstition that traffics with the holy word to get money and to

make us believe in absurdities for which Catholicism would blush,

if ever it knew of them. I have unveiled that which has been hidden

behind the deceptive and dazzling words of our governments. I have

told our countrymen of our mistakes, our vices, our faults, and our

weak complaisance with our miseries there. Where I have found virtue I

have spoken of it highly in order to render it homage; and if I have

not wept in speaking of our misfortunes, I have laughed over them,

for no one would wish to weep with me over our woes, and laughter

is ever the best means of concealing sorrow. The deeds that I have

related are true and have actually occurred; I can furnish proof of

this. My book may have (and it does have) defects from an artistic

and esthetic point of view--this I do not deny--but no one can dispute

the veracity of the facts presented." [8]

But while the primary purpose and first effect of the work was to

crystallize anti-friar sentiment, the author has risen above a mere

personal attack, which would give it only a temporary value, and by

portraying in so clear and sympathetic a way the life of his people

has produced a piece of real literature, of especial interest now as

they are being swept into the newer day. Any fool can point out errors

and defects, if they are at all apparent, and the persistent searching

them out for their own sake is the surest mark of the vulpine mind,

but the author has east aside all such petty considerations and,

whether consciously or not, has left a work of permanent value to

his own people and of interest to all friends of humanity. If ever a

fair land has been cursed with the wearisome breed of fault-finders,

both indigenous and exotic, that land is the Philippines, so it is

indeed refreshing to turn from the dreary waste of carping criticisms,

pragmatical "scientific" analyses, and sneering half-truths to a story

pulsating with life, presenting the Filipino as a human being, with

his virtues and his vices, his loves and hates, his hopes and fears.

The publication of _Noli Me Tangere_ suggests the reflection that

the story of Achilles' heel is a myth only in form. The belief that

any institution, system, organization, or arrangement has reached

an absolute form is about as far as human folly can go. The friar

orders looked upon themselves as the sum of human achievement in

man-driving and God-persuading, divinely appointed to rule, fixed

in their power, far above suspicion. Yet they were obsessed by the

sensitive, covert dread of exposure that ever lurks spectrally under

pharisaism's specious robe, so when there appeared this work of a

"miserable Indian," who dared to portray them and the conditions

that their control produced exactly as they were--for the indefinable

touch by which the author gives an air of unimpeachable veracity to

his story is perhaps its greatest artistic merit--the effect upon the

mercurial Spanish temperament was, to say the least, electric. The

very audacity of the thing left the friars breathless.

A committee of learned doctors from Santo Tomas, who were appointed

to examine the work, unmercifully scored it as attacking everything

from the state religion to the integrity of the Spanish dominions,

so the circulation of it in the Philippines was, of course, strictly

prohibited, which naturally made the demand for it greater. Large

sums were paid for single copies, of which, it might be remarked in

passing, the author himself received scarcely any part; collections

have ever had a curious habit of going astray in the Philippines.

Although the possession of a copy by a Filipino usually meant summary

imprisonment or deportation, often with the concomitant confiscation

of property for the benefit of some "patriot," the book was widely read

among the leading families and had the desired effect of crystallizing

the sentiment against the friars, thus to pave the way for concerted

action. At last the idol had been flouted, so all could attack

it. Within a year after it had begun to circulate in the Philippines a

memorial was presented to the Archbishop by quite a respectable part of

the Filipinos in Manila, requesting that the friar orders be expelled

from the country, but this resulted only in the deportation of every

signer of the petition upon whom the government could lay hands. They

were scattered literally to the four corners of the earth: some to

the Ladrone Islands, some to Fernando Po off the west coast of Africa,

some to Spanish prisons, others to remote parts of the Philippines.

Meanwhile, the author had returned to the Philippines for a visit

to his family, during which time he was constantly attended by an

officer of the Civil Guard, detailed ostensibly as a body-guard. All

his movements were closely watched, and after a few months the

Captain-General "advised" him to leave the country, at the same time

requesting a copy of _Noli Me Tangere_, saying that the excerpts

submitted to him by the censor had awakened a desire to read the

entire work. Rizal returned to Europe by way of Japan and the United

States, which did not seem to make any distinct impression upon him,

although it was only a little later that he predicted that when Spain

lost control of the Philippines, an eventuality he seemed to consider

certain not far in the future, the United States would be a probable

successor. [9]

Returning to Europe, he spent some time in London preparing an edition

of Morga's _Sucesos de las Filipinas_, a work published in Mexico

about 1606 by the principal actor in some of the most stirring scenes

of the formative period of the Philippine government. It is a record

of prime importance in Philippine history, and the resuscitation of

it was no small service to the country. Rizal added notes tending to

show that the Filipinos had been possessed of considerable culture and

civilization before the Spanish conquest, and he even intimated that

they had retrograded rather than advanced under Spanish tutelage. But

such an extreme view must be ascribed to patriotic ardor, for Rizal

himself, though possessed of that intangible quality commonly known

as genius and partly trained in northern Europe, is still in his own

personality the strongest refutation of such a contention.

Later, in Ghent, he published _El Filibusterismo_, called by him a

continuation of _Noli Me Tangere_, but with which it really has no

more connection than that some of the characters reappear and are

disposed of. [10] There is almost no connected plot in it and hardly

any action, but there is the same incisive character-drawing and

clear etching of conditions that characterize the earlier work. It

is a maturer effort and a more forceful political argument, hence

it lacks the charm and simplicity which assign _Noli Me Tangere_

to a preeminent place in Philippine literature. The light satire

of the earlier work is replaced by bitter sarcasm delivered with

deliberate intent, for the iron had evidently entered his soul with

broadening experience and the realization that justice at the hands

of decadent Spain had been an iridescent dream of his youth. Nor had

the Spanish authorities in the Philippines been idle; his relatives

had been subjected to all the annoyances and irritations of petty

persecution, eventually losing the greater part of their property,

while some of them suffered deportation.

In 1891 he returned to Hongkong to practise medicine, in which

profession he had remarkable success, even coming to be looked

upon as a wizard by his simple countrymen, among whom circulated

wonderful accounts of his magical powers. He was especially skilled

in ophthalmology, and his first operation after returning from his

studies in Europe was to restore his mother's sight by removing a

cataract from one of her eyes, an achievement which no doubt formed

the basis of marvelous tales. But the misfortunes of his people were

ever the paramount consideration, so he wrote to the Captain-General

requesting permission to remove his numerous relatives to Borneo to

establish a colony there, for which purpose liberal concessions had

been offered him by the British government. The request was denied,

and further stigmatized as an "unpatriotic" attempt to lessen the

population of the Philippines, when labor was already scarce. This

was the answer he received to a reasonable petition after the homes

of his family, including his own birthplace, had been ruthlessly

destroyed by military force, while a quarrel over ownership and rents

was still pending in the courts. The Captain-General at the time was

Valeriano Weyler, the pitiless instrument of the reactionary forces

manipulated by the monastic orders, he who was later sent to Cuba to

introduce there the repressive measures which had apparently been so

efficacious in the Philippines, thus to bring on the interference of

the United States to end Spain's colonial power--all of which induces

the reflection that there may still be deluded casuists who doubt

the reality of Nemesis.

Weyler was succeeded by Eulogio Despujols, who made sincere attempts to

reform the administration, and was quite popular with the Filipinos. In

reply to repeated requests from Rizal to be permitted to return to

the Philippines unmolested a passport was finally granted to him and

he set out for Manila. For this move on his part, in addition to the

natural desire to be among his own people, two special reasons appear:

he wished to investigate and stop if possible the unwarranted use of

his name in taking up collections that always remained mysteriously

unaccounted for, and he was drawn by a ruse deliberately planned and

executed in that his mother was several times officiously arrested

and hustled about as a common criminal in order to work upon the

son's filial feelings and thus get him back within reach of the

Spanish authority, which, as subsequent events and later researches

have shown, was the real intention in issuing the passport. Entirely

unsuspecting any ulterior motive, however, in a few days after his

arrival he convoked a motley gathering of Filipinos of all grades of

the population, for he seems to have been only slightly acquainted

among his own people and not at all versed in the mazy Walpurgis

dance of Philippine politics, and laid before it the constitution

for a _Liga Filipina_ (Philippine League), an organization looking

toward greater unity among the Filipinos and coöperation for economic

progress. This _Liga_ was no doubt the result of his observations in

England and Germany, and, despite its questionable form as a secret

society for political and economic purposes, was assuredly a step in

the right direction, but unfortunately its significance was beyond

the comprehension of his countrymen, most of whom saw in it only an

opportunity for harassing the Spanish government, for which all were

ready enough.

All his movements were closely watched, and a few days after his

return he was arrested on the charge of having seditious literature

in his baggage. The friars were already clamoring for his blood, but

Despujols seems to have been more in sympathy with Rizal than with

the men whose tool he found himself forced to be. Without trial Rizal

was ordered deported to Dapitan, a small settlement on the northern

coast of Mindanao. The decree ordering this deportation and the

destruction of all copies of his books to be found in the Philippines

is a marvel of sophistry, since, in the words of a Spanish writer of

the time, "in this document we do not know which to wonder at most: the

ingenuousness of the Governor-General, for in this decree he implicitly

acknowledges his weakness and proneness to error, or the candor of

Rizal, who believed that all the way was strewn with roses." [11]

But it is quite evident that Despujols was playing a double game,

of which he seems to have been rather ashamed, for he gave strict

orders that copies of the decree should be withheld from Rizal.

In Dapitan Rizal gave himself up to his studies and such medical

practice as sought him out in that remote spot, for the fame of his

skill was widely extended, and he was allowed to live unmolested

under parole that he would make no attempt to escape. In company

with a Jesuit missionary he gathered about him a number of native

boys and conducted a practical school on the German plan, at the same

time indulging in religious polemics with his Jesuit acquaintances by

correspondence and working fitfully on some compositions which were

never completed, noteworthy among them being a study in English of

the Tagalog verb.

But while he was living thus quietly in Dapitan, events that were to

determine his fate were misshaping themselves in Manila. The stone had

been loosened on the mountain-side and was bounding on in mad career,

far beyond his control.

III

He who of old would rend the oak,

Dream'd not of the rebound;

Chain'd by the trunk he vainly broke

Alone--how look'd he round?

BYRON.

Reason and moderation in the person of Rizal scorned and banished,

the spirit of Jean Paul Marat and John Brown of Ossawatomie rises to

the fore in the shape of one Andres Bonifacio, warehouse porter, who

sits up o' nights copying all the letters and documents that he can lay

hands on; composing grandiloquent manifestoes in Tagalog; drawing up

magnificent appointments in the names of prominent persons who would

later suffer even to the shedding of their life's blood through his

mania for writing history in advance; spelling out Spanish tales of

the French Revolution; babbling of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity;

hinting darkly to his confidants that the President of France had begun

life as a blacksmith. Only a few days after Rizal was so summarily

hustled away, Bonifacio gathered together a crowd of malcontents and

ignorant dupes, some of them composing as choice a gang of cutthroats

as ever slit the gullet of a Chinese or tied mutilated prisoners in

ant hills, and solemnly organized the _Kataastaasang Kagalang-galang

Katipunan ng mga Anak ng Bayan_, "Supreme Select Association of the

Sons of the People," for the extermination of the ruling race and

the restoration of the Golden Age. It was to bring the people into

concerted action for a general revolt on a fixed date, when they

would rise simultaneously, take possession of the city of Manila,

and--the rest were better left to the imagination, for they had been

reared under the Spanish colonial system and imitativeness has ever

been pointed out as a cardinal trait in the Filipino character. No

quarter was to be asked or given, and the most sacred ties, even of

consanguinity, were to be disregarded in the general slaughter. To

the inquiry of a curious neophyte as to how the Spaniards were

to be distinguished from the other Europeans, in order to avoid

international complications, dark Andres replied that in case of

doubt they should proceed with due caution but should take good care

that they made no mistakes about letting any of the _Castilas_ escape

their vengeance. The higher officials of the government were to be

taken alive as hostages, while the friars were to be reserved for a

special holocaust on Bagumbayan Field, where over their incinerated

remains a heaven-kissing monument would be erected.

This Katipunan seems to have been an outgrowth from Spanish

freemasonry, introduced into the Philippines by a Spaniard named

Morayta and Marcelo H. del Pilar, a native of Bulacan Province who was

the practical leader of the Filipinos in Spain, but who died there in

1896 just as he was setting out for Hongkong to mature his plans for a

general uprising to expel the friar orders. There had been some masonic

societies in the islands for some time, but the membership had been

limited to Peninsulars, and they played no part in the politics of the

time. But about 1888 Filipinos began to be admitted into some of them,

and later, chiefly through the exertions of Pilar, lodges exclusively

for them were instituted. These soon began to display great activity,

especially in the transcendental matter of collections, so that their

existence became a source of care to the government and a nightmare to

the religious orders. From them, and with a perversion of the idea in

Rizal's still-born _Liga_, it was an easy transition to the Katipunan,

which was to put aside all pretense of reconciliation with Spain,

and at the appointed time rise to exterminate not only the friars

but also all the Spaniards and Spanish sympathizers, thus to bring

about the reign of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity, under the benign

guidance of Patriot Bonifacio, with his bolo for a scepter.

With its secrecy and mystic forms, its methods of threats and

intimidation, the Katipunan spread rapidly, especially among the

Tagalogs, the most intransigent of the native peoples, and, it should

be noted, the ones in Whose territory the friars were the principal

landlords. It was organized on the triangle plan, so that no member

might know or communicate with more than three others--the one above

him from whom he received his information and instructions and two

below to whom he transmitted them. The initiations were conducted with

great secrecy and solemnity, calculated to inspire the new members

with awe and fear. The initiate, after a series of blood-curdling

ordeals to try out his courage and resolution, swore on a human skull

a terrific oath to devote his life and energies to the extermination

of the white race, regardless of age or sex, and later affixed to

it his signature or mark, usually the latter, with his own blood

taken from an incision in the left arm or left breast. This was one

form of the famous "blood compact," which, if history reads aright,

played so important a part in the assumption of sovereignty over the

Philippines by Legazpi in the name of Philip II.

Rizal was made the honorary president of the association, his

portrait hung in all the meeting-halls, and the magic of his name

used to attract the easily deluded masses, who were in a state of

agitated ignorance and growing unrest, ripe for any movement that

looked anti-governmental, and especially anti-Spanish. Soon after

the organization had been perfected, collections began to be taken

up--those collections were never overlooked--for the purpose of

chartering a steamer to rescue him from Dapitan and transport him to

Singapore, whence he might direct the general uprising, the day and

the hour for which were fixed by Bonifacio for August twenty-sixth,

1896, at six o'clock sharp in the evening, since lack of precision

in his magnificent programs was never a fault of that bold patriot,

his logic being as severe as that of the Filipino policeman who put

the flag at half-mast on Good Friday.

Of all this Rizal himself was, of course, entirely ignorant, until

in May, 1896, a Filipino doctor named Pio Valenzuela, a creature of

Bonifacio's, was despatched to Dapitan, taking along a blind man as a

pretext for the visit to the famous oculist, to lay the plans before

him for his consent and approval. Rizal expostulated with Valenzuela

for a time over such a mad and hopeless venture, which would only bring

ruin and misery upon the masses, and then is said to have very humanly

lost his patience, ending the interview "in so bad a humor and with

words so offensive that the deponent, who had gone with the intention

of remaining there a month, took the steamer on the following day, for

return to Manila." [12] He reported secretly to Bonifacio, who bestowed

several choice Tagalog epithets on Rizal, and charged his envoy to

say nothing about the failure of his mission, but rather to give the

impression that he had been successful. Rizal's name continued to be

used as the shibboleth of the insurrection, and the masses were made

to believe that he would appear as their leader at the appointed hour.

Vague reports from police officers, to the effect that something

unusual in the nature of secret societies was going on among the

people, began to reach the government, but no great attention was

paid to them, until the evening of August nineteenth, when the parish

priest of Tondo was informed by the mother-superior of one of the

convent-schools that she had just learned of a plot to massacre all

the Spaniards. She had the information from a devoted pupil, whose

brother was a compositor in the office of the _Diario de Manila_. As

is so frequently the case in Filipino families, this elder sister was

the purse-holder, and the brother's insistent requests for money,

which was needed by him to meet the repeated assessments made on

the members as the critical hour approached, awakened her curiosity

and suspicion to such an extent that she forced him to confide the

whole plan to her. Without delay she divulged it to her patroness,

who in turn notified the curate of Tondo, where the printing-office

was located. The priest called in two officers of the Civil Guard, who

arrested the young printer, frightened a confession out of him, and

that night, in company with the friar, searched the printing-office,

finding secreted there several lithographic plates for printing

receipts and certificates of membership in the Katipunan, with a

number of documents giving some account of the plot.

Then the Spanish population went wild. General Ramon Blanco was

governor and seems to have been about the only person who kept his

head at all. He tried to prevent giving so irresponsible a movement a

fictitious importance, but was utterly powerless to stay the clamor

for blood which at once arose, loudest on the part of those alleged

ministers of the gentle Christ. The gates of the old Walled City,

long fallen into disuse, were cleaned and put in order, martial law

was declared, and wholesale arrests made. Many of the prisoners were

confined in Fort Santiago, one batch being crowded into a dungeon

for which the only ventilation was a grated opening at the top, and

one night a sergeant of the guard carelessly spread his sleeping-mat

over this, so the next morning some fifty-five asphyxiated corpses

were hauled away. On the twenty-sixth armed insurrection broke out at

Caloocan, just north of Manila, from time immemorial the resort of bad

characters from all the country round and the center of brigandage,

while at San Juan del Monte, on the outskirts of the city, several

bloody skirmishes were fought a few days later with the _Guardia

Civil Veterana_, the picked police force.

Bonifacio had been warned of the discovery of his schemes in time to

make his escape and flee to the barrio, or village, of Balintawak,

a few miles north of Manila, thence to lead the attack on Caloocan

and inaugurate the reign of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity in the

manner in which Philippine insurrections have generally had a habit

of starting--with the murder of Chinese merchants and the pillage of

their shops. He had from the first reserved for himself the important

office of treasurer in the Katipunan, in addition to being on occasions

president and at all times its ruling spirit, so he now established

himself as dictator and proceeded to appoint a magnificent staff, most

of whom contrived to escape as soon as they were out of reach of his

bolo. Yet he drew considerable numbers about him, for this man, though

almost entirely unlettered, seems to have been quite a personality

among his own people, especially possessed of that gift of oratory

in his native tongue to which the Malay is so preeminently susceptible.

In Manila a special tribunal was constituted and worked steadily,

sometimes through the siesta-hour, for there were times, of which

this was one, when even Spanish justice could be swift. Bagumbayan

began to be a veritable field of blood, as the old methods of

repression were resorted to for the purpose of striking terror into

the native population by wholesale executions, nor did the ruling

powers realize that the time for such methods had passed. It was a

case of sixteenth-century colonial methods fallen into fretful and

frantic senility, so in all this wretched business it is doubtful whim

to pity the more: the blind stupidity of the fossilized conservatives

incontinently throwing an empire away, forfeiting their influence over

a people whom they, by temperament and experience, should have been

fitted to control and govern; or the potential cruelty of perverted

human nature in the dark Frankenstein who would wreak upon the rulers

in their decadent days the most hideous of the methods in the system

that produced him, as he planned his festive holocaust and carmagnole

on the spot where every spark of initiative and leadership among

his people, both good and bad, had been summarily and ruthlessly

extinguished. There is at least a world of reflection in it for the

rulers of men.

In the meantime Rizal, wearying of the quiet life in Dapitan and

doubtless foreseeing the impending catastrophe, had requested leave

to volunteer his services as a physician in the military hospitals

of Cuba, of the horrors and sufferings in which he had heard. General

Blanco at once gladly acceded to this request and had him brought to

Manila, but unfortunately the boat carrying him arrived there a day

too late for him to catch the regular August mail-steamer to Spain,

so he was kept in the cruiser a prisoner of war, awaiting the next

transportation. While he was thus detained, the Katipunan plot was

discovered and the rebellion broke out. He was accused of being

the head of it, but Blanco gave him a personal letter completely

exonerating him from any complicity in the outbreak, as well as a

letter of recommendation to the Spanish minister of war. He was placed

on the _Isla de Panay_ when it left for Spain on September third and

traveled at first as a passenger. At Singapore he was advised to land

and claim British protection, as did some of his fellow travelers,

but he refused to do so, saying that his conscience was clear.

As the name of Rizal had constantly recurred during the trials

of the Katipunan suspects, the military tribunal finally issued a

formal demand for him. The order of arrest was cabled to Port Said

and Rizal there placed in solitary confinement for the remainder

of the voyage. Arrived at Barcelona, he was confined in the grim

fortress of Montjuich, where; by a curious coincidence, the governor

was the same Despujols who had issued the decree of banishment in

1892. Shortly afterwards, he was placed on the transport _Colon_,

which was bound for the Philippines with troops, Blanco having at last

been stirred to action. Strenuous efforts were now made by Rizal's

friends in London to have him removed from the ship at Singapore,

but the British authorities declined to take any action, on the ground

that he was on a Spanish warship and therefore beyond the jurisdiction

of their courts. The _Colon_ arrived at Manila on November third and

Rizal was imprisoned in Fort Santiago, while a special tribunal was

constituted to try him on the charges of carrying on anti-patriotic

and anti-religious propaganda, rebellion, sedition, and the formation

of illegal associations. Some other charges may have been overlooked

in the hurry and excitement.

It would be almost a travesty to call a trial the proceedings which

began early in December and dragged along until the twenty-sixth. Rizal

was defended by a young Spanish officer selected by him from among

a number designated by the tribunal, who chivalrously performed so

unpopular a duty as well as he could. But the whole affair was a

mockery of justice, for the Spanish government in the Philippines had

finally and hopelessly reached the condition graphically pictured by

Mr. Kipling:

Panic that shells the drifting spar--

Loud waste with none to check--

Mad fear that rakes a scornful star

Or sweeps a consort's deck!

The clamor against Blanco had resulted in his summary removal by royal

decree and the appointment of a real "pacificator," Camilo Polavieja.

While in prison Rizal prepared an address to those of his countrymen

who were in armed rebellion, repudiating the use of his name and

deprecating the resort to violence. The closing words are a compendium

of his life and beliefs: "Countrymen: I have given proofs, as well as

the best of you, of desiring liberty for our country, and I continue

to desire it. But I place as a premise the education of the people,

so that by means of instruction and work they may have a personality

of their own and that they may make themselves worthy of that same

liberty. In my writings I have recommended the study of the civic

virtues, without which there can be no redemption. I have also written

(and my words have been repeated) that reforms, to be fruitful, must

come from _above_, that those which spring from _below_ are uncertain

and insecure movements. Imbued with these ideas, I cannot do less than

condemn, and I do condemn, this absurd, savage rebellion, planned

behind my back, which dishonors the Filipinos and discredits those

who can speak for us. I abominate all criminal actions and refuse any

kind of participation in them, pitying with all my heart the dupes who

have allowed themselves to be deceived. Go back, then, to your homes,

and may God forgive those who have acted in bad faith." This address,

however, was not published by the Spanish authorities, since they did

not consider it "patriotic" enough; instead, they killed the writer!

Rizal appeared before the tribunal bound, closely guarded by two

Peninsular soldiers, but maintained his serenity throughout and

answered the charges in a straightforward way. He pointed out the

fact that he had never taken any great part in politics, having

even quarreled with Marcelo del Pilar, the active leader of the

anti-clericals, by reason of those perennial "subscriptions," and that

during the time he was accused of being the instigator and organizer of

armed rebellion he had been a close prisoner in Dapitan under strict

surveillance by both the military and ecclesiastical authorities. The

prosecutor presented a lengthy document, which ran mostly to words,

about the only definite conclusion laid down in it being that the

Philippines "are, and always must remain, Spanish territory." What

there may have been in Rizal's career to hang such a conclusion

upon is not quite dear, but at any rate this learned legal light was

evidently still thinking in colors on the map serenely unconscious in

his European pseudo-prescience of the new and wonderful development

in the Western Hemisphere--humanity militant, Lincolnism.

The death sentence was asked, but the longer the case dragged on the

more favorable it began to look for the accused, so the president

of the tribunal, after deciding, Jeffreys-like, that the charges had

been proved, ordered that no further evidence be taken. Rizal betrayed

some sunrise when his doom was thus foreshadowed, for, dreamer that

he was, he seems not to have anticipated such a fatal eventuality for

himself. He did not lose his serenity, however, even when the tribunal

promptly brought in a verdict of guilty and imposed the death sentence,

upon which Polavieja the next day placed his _Cúmplase_, fixing the

morning of December thirtieth for the execution.

So Rizal's fate was sealed. The witnesses against him, in so far

as there was any substantial testimony at all, had been his own

countrymen, coerced or cajoled into making statements which they have

since repudiated as false, and which in some cases were extorted from

them by threats and even torture. But he betrayed very little emotion,

even maintaining what must have been an assumed cheerfulness. Only

one reproach is recorded: that he had been made a dupe of, that he had

been deceived by every one, even the _bankeros_ and _cocheros_. His old

Jesuit instructors remained with him in the _capilla_, or death-cell,

[13] and largely through the influence of an image of the Sacred Heart,

which he had carved as a schoolboy, it is claimed that a reconciliation

with the Church was effected. There has been considerable pragmatical

discussion as to what form of retraction from him was necessary,

since he had been, after studying in Europe, a frank freethinker, but

such futile polemics may safely be left to the learned doctors. That

he was reconciled with the Church would seem to be evidenced by

the fact that just before the execution he gave legal status as

his wife to the woman, a rather remarkable Eurasian adventuress,

who had lived with him in Dapitan, and the religious ceremony was

the only one then recognized in the islands. [14] The greater part

of his last night on earth was spent in composing a chain of verse;

no very majestic flight of poesy, but a pathetic monody throbbing with

patient resignation and inextinguishable hope, one of the sweetest,

saddest swan-songs ever sung.

Thus he was left at the last, entirely alone. As soon as his doom

became certain the Patriots had all scurried to cover, one gentle

poetaster even rushing into doggerel verse to condemn him as a

reversion to barbarism; the wealthier suspects betook themselves

to other lands or made judicious use of their money-bags among the

Spanish officials; the better classes of the population floundered

hopelessly, leaderless, in the confused whirl of opinions and passions;

while the voiceless millions for whom he had spoken moved on in dumb,

uncomprehending silence. He had lived in that higher dreamland of

the future, ahead of his countrymen, ahead even of those who assumed

to be the mentors of his people, and he must learn, as does every

noble soul that labors "to make the bounds of freedom wider yet,"

the bitter lesson that nine-tenths, if not all, the woes that afflict

humanity spring from man's own stupid selfishness, that the wresting

of the scepter from the tyrant is often the least of the task, that

the bondman comes to love his bonds--like Chillon's prisoner, his very

chains and he grow friends,--but that the struggle for human freedom

must go on, at whatever cost, in ever-widening circles, "wave after

wave, each mightier than the last," for as long as one body toils in

fetters or one mind welters in blind ignorance, either of the slave's

base delusion or the despot's specious illusion, there can be no final

security for any free man, or his children, or his children's children.

IV

"God save thee, ancient Mariner!

From the fiends, that plague thee thus!

Why look'st thou so?"--"With my cross-bow

I shot the Albatross!"

COLERIDGE.

It was one of those magic December mornings of the tropics--the very

nuptials of earth and sky, when great Nature seems to fling herself

incontinently into creation, wrapping the world in a brooding calm of

light and color, that Spain chose for committing political suicide

in the Philippines. Bagumbayan Field was crowded with troops, both

regulars and militia, for every man capable of being trusted with

arms was drawn up there, excepting only the necessary guards in other

parts of the city. Extra patrols were in the streets, double guards

were placed over the archiepiscopal and gubernatorial palaces. The

calmest man in all Manila that day was he who must stand before the

firing-squad.

Two special and unusual features are to be noted about this

execution. All the principal actors were Filipinos: the commander of

the troops and the officer directly in charge of the execution were

native-born, while the firing-squad itself was drawn from a local

native regiment, though it is true that on this occasion a squad of

Peninsular _cazadores_, armed with loaded Mausers, stood directly

behind them to see that they failed not in their duty. Again, there

was but one victim; for it seems to have ever been the custom of

the Spanish rulers to associate in these gruesome affairs some real

criminals with the political offenders, no doubt with the intentional

purpose of confusing the issue in the general mind. Rizal standing

alone, the occasion of so much hurried preparation and fearful

precaution, is a pathetic testimonial to the degree of incapacity

into which the ruling powers had fallen, even in chicanery.

After bidding good-by to his sister and making final disposition

regarding some personal property, the doomed man, under close guard,

walked calmly, even cheerfully, from Fort Santiago along the Malecon

to the Luneta, accompanied by his Jesuit confessors. Arrived there, he

thanked those about him for their kindness and requested the officer

in charge to allow him to face the firing-squad, since he had never

been a traitor to Spain. This the officer declined to permit, for

the order was to shoot him in the back. Rizal assented with a slight

protest, pointed out to the soldiers the spot in his back at which

they should aim, and with a firm step took his place in front of them.

Then occurred an act almost too hideous to record. There he stood,

expecting a volley of Remington bullets in his back--Time was, and

Life's stream ebbed to Eternity's flood--when the military surgeon

stepped forward and asked if he might feel his pulse! Rizal extended

his left hand, and the officer remarked that he could not understand

how a man's pulse could beat normally at such a terrific moment! The

victim shrugged his shoulders and let the hand fall again to his

side--Latin refinement could be no further refined!

A moment later there he lay, on his right side, his life-blood

spurting over the Luneta curb, eyes wide open, fixedly staring at that

Heaven where the priests had taught all those centuries agone that

Justice abides. The troops filed past the body, for the most part

silently, while desultory cries of "_Viva España!_" from among the

"patriotic" Filipino volunteers were summarily hushed by a Spanish

artillery-officer's stern rebuke: "Silence, you rabble!" To drown

out the fitful cheers and the audible murmurs, the bands struck

up Spanish national airs. Stranger death-dirge no man and system

ever had. Carnival revelers now dance about the scene and Filipino

schoolboys play baseball over that same spot.

A few days later another execution was held on that spot, of members

of the _Liga_, some of them characters that would have richly deserved

shooting at any place or time, according to existing standards, but

notable among them there knelt, torture-crazed, as to his orisons,

Francisco Roxas, millionaire capitalist, who may be regarded as the

social and economic head of the Filipino people, as Rizal was fitted

to be their intellectual leader. Shades of Anda and Vargas! Out there

at Balintawak--rather fitly, "the home of the snake-demon,"--not three

hours' march from this same spot, on the very edge of the city, Andres

Bonifacio and his literally sansculottic gangs of cutthroats were,

almost with impunity, soiling the fair name of Freedom with murder

and mutilation, rape and rapine, awakening the worst passions of an

excitable, impulsive people, destroying that essential respect for

law and order, which to restore would take a holocaust of fire and

blood, with a generation of severe training. Unquestionably did Rizal

demonstrate himself to be a seer and prophet when he applied to such

a system the story of Babylon and the fateful handwriting on the wall!

But forces had been loosed that would not be so suppressed, the time

had gone by when such wild methods of repression would serve. The

destruction of the native leaders, culminating in the executions

of Rizal and Roxas, produced a counter-effect by rousing the

Tagalogs, good and bad alike, to desperate fury, and the aftermath

was frightful. The better classes were driven to take part in the

rebellion, and Cavite especially became a veritable slaughter-pen,

as the contest settled down into a hideous struggle for mutual

extermination. Dark Andres went his wild way to perish by the

violence he had himself invoked, a prey to the rising ambition of

a young leader of considerable culture and ability, a schoolmaster

named Emilio Aguinaldo. His Katipunan hovered fitfully around Manila,

for a time even drawing to itself in their desperation some of the

better elements of the population, only to find itself sold out and

deserted by its leaders, dying away for a time; but later, under

changed conditions, it reappeared in strange metamorphosis as the

rallying-center for the largest number of Filipinos who have ever

gathered together for a common purpose, and then finally went down

before those thin grim lines in khaki with sharp and sharpest shot

clearing away the wreck of the old, blazing the way for the new:

the broadening sweep of "Democracy announcing, in rifle-volleys

death-winged, under her Star Banner, to the tune of Yankee-doodle-do,

that she is born, and, whirlwind-like, will envelop the whole world!"

MANILA, December 1, 1909

What? Does no Caesar, does no Achilles, appear on your stage now?

Not an Andromache e'en, not an Orestes, my friend?

No! there is nought to be seen there but parsons, and syndics of commerce,

Secretaries perchance, ensigns and majors of horse.

But, my good friend, pray tell, what can such people e'er meet with

That can be truly call'd great?--what that is great can they do?

SCHILLER: _Shakespeare's Ghost_.

(_Bowring's translation._)

CONTENTS

Author's Dedication

I A Social Gathering

II Crisostomo Ibarra

III The Dinner

IV Heretic and Filibuster

V A Star in a Dark Night

VI Capitan Tiago

VII An Idyl on an Azotea

VIII Recollections

IX Local Affairs

X The Town

XI The Rulers

XII All Saints

XIII Signs of Storm

XIV Tasio: Lunatic or Sage

IV The Sacristans

XVI Sisa

XVII Basilio

XVIII Souls In Torment

XIX A Schoolmaster's Difficulties

XX The Meeting in the Town Hall

XXI The Story of a Mother

XXII Lights and Shadows

XXIII Fishing

XXIV In the Wood

XXV In the House of the Sage

XXVI The Eve of the Fiesta

XXVII In the Twilight

XXVIII Correspondence

XXIX The Morning

XXX In the Church

XXXI The Sermon

XXXII The Derrick

XXXIII Free Thought

XXXIV The Dinner

XXXV Comments

XXXVI The First Cloud

XXXVII His Excellency

XXXVIII The Procession

XXXIX Doña Consolación

XL Right and Might

XLI Two Visits

XLII The Espadañas

XLIII Plans

XLIV An Examination of Conscience

XLV The Hunted

XLVI The Cockpit

XLVII The Two Señoras

XLVIII The Enigma

XLIX The Voice of the Hunted

L Elias's Story

LI Exchanges

LII The Cards of the Dead and the Shadows

LIII Il Buon Dí Si Conosce Da Mattina

LIV Revelations

LV The Catastrophe

LVI Rumors and Belief

LVII Vae Victis!

LVIII The Accursed

LIX Patriotism and Private Interests

LX Maria Clara Weds

LXI The Chase on the Lake

LXII Padre Damaso Explains

LXIII Christmas Eve

Epilogue

Glossary

AUTHOR'S DEDICATION

To My Fatherland:

Recorded in the history of human sufferings is a cancer of so malignant

a character that the least touch irritates it and awakens in it the

sharpest pains. Thus, how many times, when in the midst of modern

civilizations I have wished to call thee before me, now to accompany

me in memories, now to compare thee with other countries, hath thy

dear image presented itself showing a social cancer like to that other!

Desiring thy welfare, which is our own, and seeking the best treatment,

I will do with thee what the ancients did with their sick, exposing

them on the steps of the temple so that every one who came to invoke

the Divinity might offer them a remedy.

And to this end, I will strive to reproduce thy condition faithfully,

without discriminations; I will raise a part of the veil that covers

the evil, sacrificing to truth everything, even vanity itself, since,

as thy son, I am conscious that I also suffer from thy defects and

weaknesses.

THE AUTHOR

EUROPE, 1886

THE SOCIAL CANCER

CHAPTER I

A Social Gathering

On the last of October Don Santiago de los Santos, popularly known as

Capitan Tiago, gave a dinner. In spite of the fact that, contrary to

his usual custom, he had made the announcement only that afternoon,

it was already the sole topic of conversation in Binondo and adjacent

districts, and even in the Walled City, for at that time Capitan

Tiago was considered one of the most hospitable of men, and it was

well known that his house, like his country, shut its doors against

nothing except commerce and all new or bold ideas. Like an electric

shock the announcement ran through the world of parasites, bores,

and hangers-on, whom God in His infinite bounty creates and so kindly

multiplies in Manila. Some looked at once for shoe-polish, others

for buttons and cravats, but all were especially concerned about how

to greet the master of the house in the most familiar tone, in order

to create an atmosphere of ancient friendship or, if occasion should

arise, to excuse a late arrival.

This dinner was given in a house on Calle Anloague, and although we do

not remember the number we will describe it in such a way that it may

still be recognized, provided the earthquakes have not destroyed it. We

do not believe that its owner has had it torn down, for such labors are

generally entrusted to God or nature--which Powers hold the contracts

also for many of the projects of our government. It is a rather large

building, in the style of many in the country, and fronts upon the arm

of the Pasig which is known to some as the Binondo River, and which,

like all the streams in Manila, plays the varied rôles of bath, sewer,

laundry, fishery, means of transportation and communication, and even

drinking water if the Chinese water-carrier finds it convenient. It

is worthy of note that in the distance of nearly a mile this important

artery of the district, where traffic is most dense and movement most

deafening, can boast of only one wooden bridge, which is out of repair

on one side for six months and impassable on the other for the rest of

the year, so that during the hot season the ponies take advantage of

this permanent _status quo_ to jump off the bridge into the water,

to the great surprise of the abstracted mortal who may be dozing

inside the carriage or philosophizing upon the progress of the age.

The house of which we are speaking is somewhat low and not exactly

correct in all its lines: whether the architect who built it was

afflicted with poor eyesight or whether the earthquakes and typhoons

have twisted it out of shape, no one can say with certainty. A wide

staircase with green newels and carpeted steps leads from the tiled

entrance up to the main floor between rows of flower-pots set upon

pedestals of motley-colored and fantastically decorated Chinese

porcelain. Since there are neither porters nor servants who demand

invitation cards, we will go in, O you who read this, whether friend or

foe, if you are attracted by the strains of the orchestra, the lights,

or the suggestive rattling of dishes, knives, and forks, and if you

wish to see what such a gathering is like in the distant Pearl of

the Orient. Gladly, and for my own comfort, I should spare you this

description of the house, were it not of great importance, since we

mortals in general are very much like tortoises: we are esteemed and

classified according to our shells; in this and still other respects

the mortals of the Philippines in particular also resemble tortoises.

If we go up the stairs, we immediately find ourselves in a spacious

hallway, called there, for some unknown reason, the _caida_, which

tonight serves as the dining-room and at the same time affords a

place for the orchestra. In the center a large table profusely and

expensively decorated seems to beckon to the hanger-on with sweet

promises, while it threatens the bashful maiden, the simple _dalaga_,

with two mortal hours in the company of strangers whose language and

conversation usually have a very restricted and special character.

Contrasted with these terrestrial preparations are the motley paintings

on the walls representing religious matters, such as "Purgatory,"

"Hell," "The Last Judgment," "The Death of the Just," and "The Death

of the Sinner."

At the back of the room, fastened in a splendid and elegant framework,

in the Renaissance style, possibly by Arévalo, is a glass case in

which are seen the figures of two old women. The inscription on this

reads: "Our Lady of Peace and Prosperous Voyages, who is worshiped in

Antipolo, visiting in the disguise of a beggar the holy and renowned

Capitana Inez during her sickness." [15] While the work reveals little

taste or art, yet it possesses in compensation an extreme realism,

for to judge from the yellow and bluish tints of her face the sick

woman seems to be already a decaying corpse, and the glasses and other

objects, accompaniments of long illness, are so minutely reproduced

that even their contents may be distinguished. In looking at these

pictures, which excite the appetite and inspire gay bucolic ideas, one

may perhaps be led to think that the malicious host is well acquainted

with the characters of the majority of those who are to sit at his

table and that, in order to conceal his own way of thinking, he has

hung from the ceiling costly Chinese lanterns; bird-cages without

birds; red, green, and blue globes of frosted glass; faded air-plants;

and dried and inflated fishes, which they call _botetes_. The view is

closed on the side of the river by curious wooden arches, half Chinese

and half European, affording glimpses of a terrace with arbors and

bowers faintly lighted by paper lanterns of many colors.

In the sala, among massive mirrors and gleaming chandeliers, the

guests are assembled. Here, on a raised platform, stands a grand

piano of great price, which tonight has the additional virtue of not

being played upon. Here, hanging on the wall, is an oil-painting of a

handsome man in full dress, rigid, erect, straight as the tasseled cane

he holds in his stiff, ring-covered fingers--the whole seeming to say,

"Ahem! See how well dressed and how dignified I am!" The furnishings

of the room are elegant and perhaps uncomfortable and unhealthful,

since the master of the house would consider not so much the comfort

and health of his guests as his own ostentation, "A terrible thing

is dysentery," he would say to them, "but you are sitting in European

chairs and that is something you don't find every day."

This room is almost filled with people, the men being separated from

the women as in synagogues and Catholic churches. The women consist of

a number of Filipino and Spanish maidens, who, when they open their

mouths to yawn, instantly cover them with their fans and who murmur

only a few words to each other, any conversation ventured upon dying

out in monosyllables like the sounds heard in a house at night, sounds

made by the rats and lizards. Is it perhaps the different likenesses

of Our Lady hanging on the walls that force them to silence and a

religious demeanor or is it that the women here are an exception?

A cousin of Capitan Tiago, a sweet-faced old woman, who speaks Spanish

quite badly, is the only one receiving the ladies. To offer to the

Spanish ladies a plate of cigars and _buyos_, to extend her hand to

her countrywomen to be kissed, exactly as the friars do,--this is

the sum of her courtesy, her policy. The poor old lady soon became

bored, and taking advantage of the noise of a plate breaking, rushed

precipitately away, muttering, "_Jesús!_ Just wait, you rascals!" and

failed to reappear.

The men, for their part, are making more of a stir. Some cadets

in one corner are conversing in a lively manner but in low tones,

looking around now and then to point out different persons in the room

while they laugh more or less openly among themselves. In contrast,

two foreigners dressed in white are promenading silently from one end

of the room to the other with their hands crossed behind their backs,

like the bored passengers on the deck of a ship. All the interest and

the greatest animation proceed from a group composed of two priests,

two civilians, and a soldier who are seated around a small table on

which are seen bottles of wine and English biscuits.

The soldier, a tall, elderly lieutenant with an austere countenance--a

Duke of Alva straggling behind in the roster of the Civil Guard--talks

little, but in a harsh, curt way. One of the priests, a youthful

Dominican friar, handsome, graceful, polished as the gold-mounted

eyeglasses he wears, maintains a premature gravity. He is the curate

of Binondo and has been in former years a professor in the college of

San Juan de Letran, [16] where he enjoyed the reputation of being a

consummate dialectician, so much so that in the days when the sons

of Guzman [17] still dared to match themselves in subtleties with

laymen, the able disputant B. de Luna had never been able either to

catch or to confuse him, the distinctions made by Fray Sibyla leaving

his opponent in the situation of a fisherman who tries to catch eels

with a lasso. The Dominican says little, appearing to weigh his words.

Quite in contrast, the other priest, a Franciscan, talks much and

gesticulates more. In spite of the fact that his hair is beginning to

turn gray, he seems to be preserving well his robust constitution,

while his regular features, his rather disquieting glance, his wide

jaws and herculean frame give him the appearance of a Roman noble in

disguise and make us involuntarily recall one of those three monks of

whom Heine tells in his "Gods in Exile," who at the September equinox

in the Tyrol used to cross a lake at midnight and each time place in

the hand of the poor boatman a silver piece, cold as ice, which left

him full of terror. [18] But Fray Damaso is not so mysterious as they

were. He is full of merriment, and if the tone of his voice is rough

like that of a man who has never had occasion to correct himself and

who believes that whatever he says is holy and above improvement, still

his frank, merry laugh wipes out this disagreeable impression and even

obliges us to pardon his showing to the room bare feet and hairy legs

that would make the fortune of a Mendieta in the Quiapo fairs. [19]

One of the civilians is a very small man with a black beard, the only

thing notable about him being his nose, which, to judge from its size,

ought not to belong to him. The other is a rubicund youth, who seems

to have arrived but recently in the country. With him the Franciscan

is carrying on a lively discussion.

"You'll see," the friar was saying, "when you've been here a few

months you'll be convinced of what I say. It's one thing to govern

in Madrid and another to live in the Philippines."

"But--"

"I, for example," continued Fray Damaso, raising his voice still

higher to prevent the other from speaking, "I, for example, who can

look back over twenty-three years of bananas and _morisqueta_, know

whereof I speak. Don't come at me with theories and fine speeches,

for I know the Indian. [20] Mark well that the moment I arrived in the

country I was assigned to a toxin, small it is true, but especially

devoted to agriculture. I didn't understand Tagalog very well then,

but I was, soon confessing the women, and we understood one another

and they came to like me so well that three years later, when I was

transferred to another and larger town, made vacant by the death of

the native curate, all fell to weeping, they heaped gifts upon me,

they escorted me with music--"

"But that only goes to show--"

"Wait, wait! Don't be so hasty! My successor remained a shorter

time, and when he left he had more attendance, more tears, and more

music. Yet he had been more given to whipping and had raised the fees

in the parish to almost double."

"But you will allow me--"

"But that isn't all. I stayed in the town of San Diego twenty years

and it has been only a few months since I left it."

Here he showed signs of chagrin.

"Twenty years, no one can deny, are more than sufficient to get

acquainted with a town. San Diego has a population of six thousand

souls and I knew every inhabitant as well as if I had been his mother

and wet-nurse. I knew in which foot this one was lame, where the

shoe pinched that one, who was courting that girl, what affairs she

had had and with whom, who was the real father of the child, and so

on--for I was the confessor of every last one, and they took care not

to fail in their duty. Our host, Santiago, will tell you whether I am

speaking the truth, for he has a lot of land there and that was where

we first became friends. Well then, you may see what the Indian is:

when I left I was escorted by only a few old women and some of the

tertiary brethren--and that after I had been there twenty years!"

"But I don't see what that has to do with the abolition of the tobacco

monopoly," [21] ventured the rubicund youth, taking advantage of the

Franciscan's pausing to drink a glass of sherry.

Fray Damaso was so greatly surprised that he nearly let his glass

fall. He remained for a moment staring fixedly at the young man.

"What? How's that?" he was finally able to exclaim in great

wonderment. "Is it possible that you don't see it as clear as

day? Don't you see, my son, that all this proves plainly that the

reforms of the ministers are irrational?"

It was now the youth's turn to look perplexed. The lieutenant wrinkled

his eyebrows a little more and the small man nodded toward Fray Damaso

equivocally. The Dominican contented himself with almost turning his

back on the whole group.

"Do you really believe so?" the young man at length asked with great

seriousness, as he looked at the friar with curiosity.

"Do I believe so? As I believe the Gospel! The Indian is so indolent!"

"Ah, pardon me for interrupting you," said the young man, lowering

his voice and drawing his chair a little closer, "but you have said

something that awakens all my interest. Does this indolence actually,

naturally, exist among the natives or is there some truth in what a

foreign traveler says: that with this indolence we excuse our own,

as well as our backwardness and our colonial system. He referred to

other colonies whose inhabitants belong to the same race--"

"Bah, jealousy! Ask Señor Laruja, who also knows this country. Ask him

if there is any equal to the ignorance and indolence of the Indian."

"It's true," affirmed the little man, who was referred to as Señor

Laruja. "In no part of the world can you find any one more indolent

than the Indian, in no part of the world."

"Nor more vicious, nor more ungrateful!"

"Nor more unmannerly!"

The rubicund youth began to glance about nervously. "Gentlemen," he

whispered, "I believe that we are in the house of an Indian. Those

young ladies--"

"Bah, don't be so apprehensive! Santiago doesn't consider himself an

Indian--and besides, he's not here. And what if he were! These are

the nonsensical ideas of the newcomers. Let a few months pass and you

will change your opinion, after you have attended a lot of fiestas

and _bailúhan_, slept on cots, and eaten your fill of _tinola_."

"Ah, is this thing that you call _tinola_ a variety of lotus which

makes people--er--forgetful?"

"Nothing of the kind!" exclaimed Fray Damaso with a smile. "You're

getting absurd. _Tinola_ is a stew of chicken and squash. How long

has it been since you got here?"

"Four days," responded the youth, rather offended.

"Have you come as a government employee?"

"No, sir, I've come at my own expense to study the country."

"Man, what a rare bird!" exclaimed Fray Damaso, staring at him with

curiosity. "To come at one's own expense and for such foolishness! What

a wonder! When there are so many books! And with two fingerbreadths

of forehead! Many have written books as big as that! With two

fingerbreadths of forehead!"

The Dominican here brusquely broke in upon the conversation. "Did

your Reverence, Fray Damaso, say that you had been twenty years in

the town of San Diego and that you had left it? Wasn't your Reverence

satisfied with the town?"

At this question, which was put in a very natural and almost

negligent tone, Fray Damaso suddenly lost all his merriment and stopped

laughing. "No!" he grunted dryly, and let himself back heavily against

the back of his chair.

The Dominican went on in a still more indifferent tone. "It must be

painful to leave a town where one has been for twenty years and which

he knows as well as the clothes he wears. I certainly was sorry to

leave Kamiling and that after I had been there only a few months. But

my superiors did it for the good of the Orders for my own good."

Fray Damaso, for the first time that evening, seemed to be very

thoughtful. Suddenly he brought his fist down on the arm of his chair

and with a heavy breath exclaimed: "Either Religion is a fact or it

is not! That is, either the curates are free or they are not! The

country is going to ruin, it is lost!" And again he struck the arm

of his chair.

Everybody in the sala turned toward the group with astonished

looks. The Dominican raised his head to stare at the Franciscan from

under his glasses. The two foreigners paused a moment, stared with an

expression of mingled severity and reproof, then immediately continued

their promenade.

"He's in a bad humor because you haven't treated him with deference,"

murmured Señor Laruja into the ear of the rubicund youth.

"What does your Reverence mean? What's the trouble?" inquired the

Dominican and the lieutenant at the same time, but in different tones.

"That's why so many calamities come! The ruling powers support

heretics against the ministers of God!" continued the Franciscan,

raising his heavy fists.

"What do you mean?" again inquired the frowning lieutenant, half

rising from his chair.

"What do I mean?" repeated Fray Damaso, raising his voice and facing

the lieutenant. "I'll tell you what I mean. I, yes I, mean to say that

when a priest throws out of his cemetery the corpse of a heretic,

no one, not even the King himself, has any right to interfere and

much less to impose any punishment! But a little General--a little

General Calamity--"

"Padre, his Excellency is the Vice-Regal Patron!" shouted the soldier,

rising to his feet.

"Excellency! Vice-Regal Patron! What of that!" retorted the Franciscan,

also rising. "In other times he would have been dragged down a

staircase as the religious orders once did with the impious Governor

Bustamente. [22] Those were indeed the days of faith."

"I warn you that I can't permit this! His Excellency represents his

Majesty the King!"

"King or rook! What difference does that make? For us there is no

king other than the legitimate [23]--"

"Halt!" shouted the lieutenant in a threatening tone, as if he were

commanding his soldiers. "Either you withdraw what you have said or

tomorrow I will report it to his Excellency!"

"Go ahead--right now--go on!" was the sarcastic rejoinder of Fray

Damaso as he approached the officer with clenched fists. "Do you think

that because I wear the cloth, I'm afraid? Go now, while I can lend

you my carriage!"

The dispute was taking a ludicrous turn, but fortunately the

Dominican intervened. "Gentlemen," he began in an authoritative

tone and with the nasal twang that so well becomes the friars,

"you must not confuse things or seek for offenses where there are

none. We must distinguish in the words of Fray Damaso those of the

man from those of the priest. The latter, as such, _per se_, can

never give offense, because they spring from absolute truth, while

in those of the man there is a secondary distinction to be made:

those which he utters _ab irato_, those which he utters _ex ore_,

but not _in corde_, and those which he does utter _in corde_. These

last are the only ones that can really offend, and only according to

whether they preexisted as a motive _in mente_, or arose solely _per

accidens_ in the heat of the discussion, if there really exist--"

"But I, by _accidens_ and for my own part, understand his motives,

Padre Sibyla," broke in the old soldier, who saw himself about to

be entangled in so many distinctions that he feared lest he might

still be held to blame. "I understand the motives about which your

Reverence is going to make distinctions. During the absence of Padre

Damaso from San Diego, his coadjutor buried the body of an extremely

worthy individual--yes, sir, extremely worthy, for I had had dealings

with him many times and had been entertained in his house. What

if he never went to confession, what does that matter? Neither do

I go to confession! But to say that he committed suicide is a lie,

a slander! A man such as he was, who has a son upon whom he centers

his affection and hopes, a man who has faith in God, who recognizes

his duties to society, a just and honorable man, does not commit

suicide. This much I will say and will refrain from expressing the

rest of my thoughts here, so please your Reverence."

Then, turning his back on the Franciscan, he went on: "Now then, this

priest on his return to the town, after maltreating the poor coadjutor,

had the corpse dug up and taken away from the cemetery to be buried I

don't know where. The people of San Diego were cowardly enough not to

protest, although it is true that few knew of the outrage. The dead

man had no relatives there and his only son was in Europe. But his

Excellency learned of the affair and as he is an upright man asked

for some punishment--and Padre Damaso was transferred to a better

town. That's all there is to it. Now your Reverence can make your

distinctions."

So saying, he withdrew from the group.

"I'm sorry that I inadvertently brought up so delicate a subject,"

said Padre Sibyla sadly. "But, after all, if there has been a gain

in the change of towns--"

"How is there to be a gain? And what of all the things that

are lost in moving, the letters, and the--and everything that is

mislaid?" interrupted Fray Damaso, stammering in the vain effort to

control his anger.

Little by little the party resumed its former tranquillity. Other

guests had come in, among them a lame old Spaniard of mild and

inoffensive aspect leaning on the arm of an elderly Filipina,

who was resplendent in frizzes and paint and a European gown. The

group welcomed them heartily, and Doctor De Espadaña and his

señora, the _Doctora_ Doña Victorina, took their seats among our

acquaintances. Some newspaper reporters and shopkeepers greeted one

another and moved about aimlessly without knowing just what to do.

"But can you tell me, Señor Laruja, what kind of man our host

is?" inquired the rubicund youth. "I haven't been introduced to

him yet."

"They say that he has gone out. I haven't seen him either."

"There's no need of introductions here," volunteered Fray

Damaso. "Santiago is made of the right stuff."

"No, he's not the man who invented gunpowder," [24] added Laruja.

"You too, Señor Laruja," exclaimed Doña Victorina in mild reproach,

as she fanned herself. "How could the poor man invent gunpowder if,

as is said, the Chinese invented it centuries ago?"

"The Chinese! Are you crazy?" cried Fray Damaso. "Out with you! A

Franciscan, one of my Order, Fray What-do-you-call-him Savalls,

[25] invented it in the--ah the seventh century!"

"A Franciscan? Well, he must have been a missionary in China, that

Padre Savalls," replied the lady, who did not thus easily part from

her beliefs.

"Schwartz, [26] perhaps you mean, señora," said Fray Sibyla, without

looking at her.

"I don't know. Fray Damaso said a Franciscan and I was only repeating."

"Well, Savalls or Chevas, what does it matter? The difference of

a letter doesn't make him a Chinaman," replied the Franciscan in

bad humor.

"And in the fourteenth century, not the seventh," added the Dominican

in a tone of correction, as if to mortify the pride of the other friar.

"Well, neither does a century more or less make him a Dominican."

"Don't get angry, your Reverence," admonished Padre Sibyla,

smiling. "So much the better that he did invent it so as to save his

brethren the trouble."

"And did you say, Padre Sibyla, that it was in the fourteenth

century?" asked Doña Victorina with great interest. "Was that before

or after Christ?"

Fortunately for the individual questioned, two persons entered

the room.