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A leader in church work also, and several times “Hermano mayor” of its charitable society, the Captain’s name appears on a number of lists that have come down from that time as a liberal contributor to various public subscriptions. His wife was equally benevolent, as the records show.

Mr. and Mrs. Mercado did not neglect their family, which was rather numerous. Their children were Gavino, Potenciana (who never married), Leoncio, Fausto, Barcelisa (who became the wife of Hermenegildo Austria), Gabriel, Julian, Gregorio Fernando, Casimiro, Petrona (who married Gregorio Neri), Tomasa (later Mrs. F. de Guzman), and Cornelia, the belle of the family, who later lived in Batangas.

Young Francisco was only eight years old when his father died, but his mother and sister Potenciana looked well after him. First he attended a Biñan Latin school, and later he seems to have studied Latin and philosophy in the College of San José in Manila.

A sister, Petrona, for some years had been a dressgoods merchant in nearby Kalamba, on an estate that had recently come under the same ownership as Biñan. There she later married, and shortly after was widowed. Possibly upon their mother’s death, Potenciana and Francisco removed to Kalamba; though Petrona died not long after, her brother and sister continued to make their home there.

Francisco, in spite of his youth, became a tenant of the estate as did some others of his family, for their Biñan holdings were not large enough to give farms to all Captain Juan’s many sons. The landlords early recognized the agricultural skill of the Mercados by further allotments, as they could bring more land under cultivation. Sometimes Francisco was able to buy the holdings of others who proved less successful in their management and became discouraged.

The pioneer farming, clearing the miasmatic forests especially, was dangerous work, and there were few families that did not buy their land with the lives of some of its members. In 1847 the Mercados had funerals, of brothers and nephews of Francisco, and, chief among them, of that elder sister who had devoted her life to him, Potenciana. She had always prompted and inspired the young man, and Francisco’s success in life was largely due to her wise counsels and her devoted encouragement of his industry and ambition. Her thrifty management of the home, too, was sadly missed.

A year after his sister Potenciana’s death, Francisco Mercado married Teodora Alonzo, a native of Manila, who for several years had been residing with her mother at Kalamba. The history of the family of Mrs. Mercado is unfortunately not so easily traced as is that of her husband, and what is known is of less simplicity and perhaps of more interest since the mother’s influence is greater than the father’s, and she was the mother of José Rizal.

Her father, Lorenzo Alberto Alonzo (born 1790, died 1854), is said to have been “very Chinese” in appearance. He had a brother who was a priest, and a sister, Isabel, who was quite wealthy; he himself was also well to do. Their mother, Maria Florentina (born 1771, died 1817), was, on her mother’s side, of the famous Florentina family of Chinese mestizos originating in Baliwag, Bulacan, and her father was Captain Mariano Alejandro of Biñan.

Lorenzo Alberto was municipal captain of Biñan in 1824, as had been his father, Captain Cipriano Alonzo (died 18O5), in 1797. The grandfather, Captain Gregorio Alonzo (died 1794), was a native of Quiotan barrio, and twice, in 1763 and again in 1768, at the head of the mestizos’ organization of the Santa Cruz district in Manila.

Captain Lorenzo was educated for a surveyor, and his engineering books, some in English and others in French, were preserved in Biñan till, upon the death of his son, the family belongings were scattered. He was wealthy, and had invested a considerable sum of money with the American Manila shipping firms of Peele, Hubbell & Co., and Russell, Sturgis & Co.

The family story is that he became acquainted with Brigida de Quintos, Mrs. Rizal’s mother, while he was a student in Manila, and that she, being unusually well educated for a girl of those days, helped him with his mathematics. Their acquaintance apparently arose through relationship, both being connected with the Reyes family. They had five children: Narcisa (who married Santiago Muger), Teodora (Mrs. Francisco Rizal Mercado), Gregorio, Manuel and José. All were born in Manila, but lived in Kalamba, and they used the name Alonzo till that general change of names in 1850 when, with their mother, they adopted the name Realonda. This latter name has been said to be an allusion to royal blood in the family, but other indications suggest that it might have been a careless mistake made in writing by Rosa Realonda, whose name sometimes appears written as Redonda. There is a family Redondo (Redonda in its feminine form) Alonzo of Ilokano origin, the same stock as their traditions give for Mrs. Rizal’s father, some of whose members were to be found in the neighborhood of Biñan and Pasay. One member of this family was akin in spirit to José Rizal, for he was fined twenty-five thousand pesos by the Supreme Court of the Philippine Islands for “contempt of religion.” It appears that he put some original comparisons into a petition which sought to obtain justice from an inferior tribunal where, by the omission of the word “not” in copying, the clerk had reversed the court’s decision but the judge refused to change the record.

Brigida de Quintos’s death record, in Kalamba (1856), speaks of her as the daughter of Manuel de Quintos and Regina Ochoa.

The most obscure part of Rizal’s family tree is the Ochoa branch, the family of the maternal grandmother, for all the archives,–church, land and court,–disappeared during the late disturbed conditions of which Cavite was the center. So one can only repeat what has been told by elderly people who have been found reliable in other accounts where the clews they gave could be compared with existing records.

The first of the family is said to have been Policarpio Ochoa, an employé of the Spanish customs house. Estanislao Manuel Ochoa was his son, with the blood of old Castile mingling with Chinese and Tagalog in his veins. He was part owner of the Hacienda of San Francisco de Malabon. One story says that somewhere in this family was a Mariquita Ochoa, of such beauty that she was known in Cavite, where was her home, as the Sampaguita (jasmine) of the Parian, or Chinese, quarter.

There was a Spanish nobleman also in Cavite in her time who had been deported for political reasons–probably for holding liberal opinions and for being thought to be favorable to English ideas. It is said that this particular “caja abierta” was a Marquis de Canete, and if so there is ground for the claim that he was of royal blood; at least some of his far-off ancestors had been related to a former ruling family of Spain.

Mariquita’s mother knew the exile, since, according to the custom in Filipino families, she looked after the business interests of her husband. Curious to see the belle of whom he had heard so much, the Marquis made an excuse of doing business with the mother, and went to her home on an occasion when he knew that the mother was away. No one else was there to answer his knock and Mariquita, busied in making candy, could not in her confusion find a coconut shell to dip water for washing her hands from the large jar, and not to keep the visitor waiting, she answered the door as she was. Not only did her appearance realize the expectations of the Marquis, but the girl seemed equally attractive for her self-possessed manners and lively mind. The nobleman was charmed. On his way home he met a cart loaded with coconut dippers and he bought the entire lot and sent it as his first present.

After this the exile invented numerous excuses to call, till Mariquita’s mother finally agreed to his union with her daughter. His political disability made him out of favor with the State church, the only place in which people could be married then, but Mariquita became what in English would be called a common-law wife. One of their children, José, had a tobacco factory and a slipper factory in Meisic, Manila, and was the especial protector of his younger sister, Regina, who became the wife of attorney Manuel de Quintos. A sister of Regina was Diega de Castro, who with another sister, Luseria, sold “chorizos” (sausages) or “tiratira” (taffy candy), the first at a store and the second in their own home, but both in Cavite, according to the variations of one narrative.

A different account varies the time and omits the noble ancestor by saying that Regina was married unusually young to Manuel de Quintos to escape the attentions of the Marquis. Another authority claims that Regina was wedded to the lawyer in second marriage, being the widow of Facundo de Layva, the captain of the ship Hernando Magallanes, whose pilot, by the way, was Andrew Stewart, an Englishman.

It is certain that Regina Ochoa was of Spanish, Chinese and Tagalog ancestry, and it is recorded that she was the wife of Manuel de Quintos. Here we stop depending on memories, for in the restored burial register of Kalamba church in the entry of the funeral of Brigida de Quintos she is called “the daughter of Manuel de Quintos and Regina Ochoa.”

Manuel de Quintos was an attorney of Manila, graduated from Santo Tomás University, whose family were Chinese mestizos of Pangasinan. The lawyer’s father, of the same name, had been municipal captain of Lingayan, and an uncle was leader of the Chinese mestizos in a protest they had made against the arbitrariness of their provincial governor. This petition for redress of grievances is preserved in the Supreme Court archives with “Joaquin de Quintos” well and boldly written at the head of the complainants’ names, evidence of a culture and a courage that were equally uncommon in those days. Complaints under Spanish rule, no matter how well founded, meant trouble for the complainants; we must not forget that it was a vastly different thing from signing petitions or adhering to resolutions nowadays. Then the signers risked certainly great annoyance, sometimes imprisonment, and not infrequently death.

The home of Quintos had been in San Pedro Macati at the time of Captain Novales’s uprising, the so-called “American revolt” in protest against the Peninsulars sent out to supersede the Mexican officers who had remained loyal to Spain when the colony of their birth separated itself from the mother country. As little San Pedro Macati is charged with having originated the conspiracy, it is unlikely that it was concealed from the liberal lawyer, for attorneys were scarcer and held in higher esteem in those days.

The conservative element then, as later, did not often let drop any opportunity of purging the community of those who thought for themselves, by condemning them for crime unheard and undefended, whether they had been guilty of it or not.

All the branches of Mrs. Rizal’s family were much richer than the relatives of her husband; there were numerous lawyers and priests among them–the old-time proof of social standing–and they were influential in the country.

There are several names of these related families that belong among the descendants of Lakandola, as traced by Mr. Luther Parker in his study of the Pampangan migration, and color is thereby given, so far as Rizal is concerned, to a proud boast that an old Pampangan lady of this descent makes for her family. She, who is exceedingly well posted upon her ancestry, ends the tracing of her lineage from Lakandola’s time by asserting that the blood of that chief flowed in the veins of every Filipino who had the courage to stand forward as the champion of his people from the earliest days to the close of the Spanish régime. Lakandola, of course, belonged to the Mohammedan Sumatrans who emigrated to the Philippines only a few generations before Magellan’s discovery.

To recall relatives of Mrs. Rizal who were in the professions may help to an understanding of the prominence of the family. Felix Florentino, an uncle, was the first clerk of the Nueva Segovia (Vigan) court. A cousin-german, José Florentino, was a Philippine deputy in the Spanish Cortes, and a lawyer of note, as was also his brother, Manuel. Another relative, less near, was Clerk Reyes, of the Court of First Instance in Manila. The priest of Rosario, Vicar of Batangas Province, Father Leyva, was a half-blood relation, and another priestly relative was Mrs. Rizal’s paternal uncle, Father Alonzo. These were in the earlier days when professional men were scarcer. Father Almeida, of Santa Cruz Church, Manila, and Father Agustin Mendoz, his predecessor in the same church, and one of the sufferers in the Cavite trouble of ’72–a deporté–were most distantly connected with the Rizal family. Another relative, of the Reyes connection, was in the Internal Revenue Service and had charge of Kalamba during the latter part of the eighteenth century.

Mrs. Rizal was baptized in Santa Cruz Church, Manila, November 18, 1827, as Teodora Morales Alonzo, her godmother being a relative by marriage, Doña Maria Cristina. She was given an exceptionally good fundamental education by her gifted mother, and completed her training in Santa Rosa College, Manila, which was in the charge of Filipino sisters. Especially did the religious influence of her schooling manifest itself in her after life. Unfortunately there are no records in the institution, because it is said all the members of the Order who could read and write were needed for instruction and there was no one competent who had time for clerical work.

Brigida de Quintos had removed to the property in Kalamba which Lorenzo Alberto had transferred to her, and there as early as 1844 she is first mentioned as Brigida de Quintos, then as Brigida de Alonzo, and later as Brigida Realonda.

CHAPTER IV

Rizal’s Early Childhood

JOSÉ PROTASIO RIZAL MERCADO Y ALONZO REALONDA, the seventh child of Francisco Engracio Rizal Mercado y Alejandro and his wife, Teodora Morales Alonzo Realonda y Quintos, was born in Kalamba, June 19, 1861.

He was a typical Filipino, for few persons in this land of mixed blood could boast a greater mixture than his. Practically all the ethnic elements, perhaps even the Negrito in the far past, combined in his blood. All his ancestors, except the doubtful strain of the Negrito, had been immigrants to the Philippines, early Malays, and later Sumatrans, Chinese of prehistoric times and the refugees from the Tartar dominion, and Spaniards of old Castile and Valencia–representatives of all the various peoples who have blended to make the strength of the Philippine race.

Shortly before José’s birth his family had built a pretentious new home in the center of Kalamba on a lot which Francisco Mercado had inherited from his brother. The house was destroyed before its usefulness had ceased, by the vindictiveness of those who hated the man-child that was born there. And later on the gratitude of a free people held the same spot sacred because there began that life consecrated to the Philippines and finally given for it, after preparing the way for the union of the various disunited Chinese mestizos, Spanish mestizos, and half a hundred dialectically distinguished “Indians” into the united people of the Philippines.

José was christened in the nearby church when three days old, and as two out-of-town bands happened to be in Kalamba for a local festival, music was a feature of the event. His godfather was Father Pedro Casañas, a Filipino priest of a Kalamba family, and the priest who christened him was also a Filipino, Father Rufino Collantes. Following is a translation of the record of Rizal’s birth and baptism: “I, the undersigned parish priest of the town of Calamba, certify that from the investigation made with proper authority, for replacing the parish books which were burned September 28, 1862, to be found in Docket No. 1 of Baptisms, page 49, it appears by the sworn testimony of competent witnesses that JOSÉ RIZAL MERCADO is the legitimate son, and of lawful wedlock, of Don Francisco Rizal Mercado and Doña Teodora Realonda, having been baptized in this parish on the 22d day of June in the year 1861, by the parish preiset, Rev. Rufino Collantes, Rev. Pedro Casañas being his god-father.”–Witness my signature. (Signed) LEONCIO LOPEZ.

José Rizal’s earliest training recalls the education of William and Alexander von Humboldt, those two nineteenth century Germans whose achievements for the prosperity of their fatherland and the advancement of humanity have caused them to be spoken of as the most remarkable pair of brothers that ever lived. He was not physically a strong child, but the direction of his first studies was by an unusually gifted mother, who succeeded, almost without the aid of books, in laying a foundation upon which the man placed an amount of well-mastered knowledge along many different lines that is truly marvelous, and this was done in so short a time that its brevity constitutes another wonder.

At three he learned his letters, having insisted upon being taught to read and being allowed to share the lessons of an elder sister. Immediately thereafter he was discovered with her story book, spelling out its words by the aid of the syllabary or “caton” which he had propped up before him and was using as one does a dictionary in a foreign language.

The little boy spent also much of his time in the church, which was conveniently near, but when the mother suggested that this might be an indication of religious inclination, his prompt response was that he liked to watch the people.

To how good purpose the small eyes and ears were used, the true-to-life types of the characters in “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo” testify.

Three uncles, brothers of the mother, concerned themselves with the intellectual, artistic and physical training of this promising nephew. The youngest, José, a teacher, looked after the regular lessons. The giant Manuel developed the physique of the youngster, until he had a supple body of silk and steel and was no longer a sickly lad, though he did not entirely lose his somewhat delicate looks. The more scholarly Gregorio saw that the child earned his candy money–trying to instill the idea into his mind that it was not the world’s way that anything worth having should come without effort; he taught him also the value of rapidity in work, to think for himself, and to observe carefully and to picture what he saw.

Sometimes José would draw a bird flying without lifting pencil from the paper till the picture was finished. At other times it would be a horse running or a dog in chase, but it always must be something of which he had thought himself and the idea must not be overworked; there was no payment for what had been done often before. Thus he came to think for himself, ideas were suggested to him indirectly, so he was never a servile copyist, and he acquired the habit of speedy accomplishment.

Clay at first, then wax, was his favorite play material. From these he modeled birds and butterflies that came ever nearer to the originals in nature as the wise praise of the uncles called his attention to possibilities of improvement and encouraged him to further effort. This was the beginning of his nature study.

José had a pony and used to take long rides through all the surrounding country, so rich in picturesque scenery. Besides these horseback expeditions were excursions afoot; on the latter his companion was his big black dog, Usman. His father pretended to be fearful of some accident if dog and pony went together, so the boy had to choose between these favorites, and alternated walking and riding, just as Mr. Mercado had planned he should. The long pedestrian excursions of his European life, though spoken of as German and English habits, were merely continuations of this childhood custom. There were other playmates besides the dog and the horse, especially doves that lived in several houses about the Mercado home, and the lad was friend and defender of all the animals, birds, and even insects in the neighborhood. Had his childish sympathies been respected the family would have been strictly vegetarian in their diet.

At times José was permitted to spend the night in one of the curious little straw huts which La Laguna farmers put up during the harvest season, and the myths and legends of the region which he then heard interested him and were later made good use of in his writings.

Sleight-of-hand tricks were a favorite amusement, and he developed a dexterity which mystified the simple folk of the country. This diversion, and his proficiency in it, gave rise to that mysterious awe with which he was regarded by the common people of his home region; they ascribed to him supernatural powers, and refused to believe that he was really dead even after the tragedy of Bagumbayan.

Entertainment of the neighbors with magic-lantern exhibitions was another frequent amusement, an ordinary lamp throwing its light on a common sheet serving as a screen. José’s supple fingers twisted themselves into fantastic shapes, the enlarged shadows of which on the curtain bore resemblance to animals, and paper accessories were worked in to vary and enlarge the repertoire of action figures. The youthful showman was quite successful in catering to the public taste, and the knowledge he then gained proved valuable later in enabling him to approach his countrymen with books that held their attention and gave him the opportunity to tell them of shortcomings which it was necessary that they should correct.

Almost from babyhood he had a grown-up way about him, a sort of dignity that seemed to make him realize and respect the rights of others and unconsciously disposed his elders to reason with him, rather than scold him for his slight offenses. This habit grew, as reprimands were needed but once, and his grave promises of better behavior were faithfully kept when the explanation of why his conduct was wrong was once made clear to him. So the child came to be not an unwelcome companion even for adults, for he respected their moods and was never troublesome. A big influence in the formation of the child’s character was his association with the parish priest of Kalamba, Father Leoncio Lopez.

The Kalamba church and convento, which were located across the way from the Rizal home, were constructed after the great earthquake of 1863, which demolished so many edifices throughout the central part of the Philippines.

The curate of Kalamba had a strong personality and was notable among the Filipino secular clergy of that day when responsibility had developed many creditable figures. An English writer of long residence in the Philippines, John Foreman, in his book on the Philippine Islands, describes how his first meeting with this priest impressed him, and tells us that subsequent acquaintance confirmed the early favorable opinion of one whom he considered remarkable for broad intelligence and sanity of view. Father Leoncío never deceived himself and his judgment was sound and clear, even when against the opinions and persons of whom he would have preferred to think differently. Probably José, through the priest’s fondness for children and because he was well behaved and the son of friendly neighbors, was at first tolerated about the convento, the Philippine name for the priest’s residence, but soon he became a welcome visitor for his own sake.

He never disturbed the priest’s meditations when the old clergyman was studying out some difficult question, but was a keen observer, apparently none the less curious for his respectful reserve. Father Leoncío may have forgotten the age of his listener, or possibly was only thinking aloud, but he spoke of those matters which interested all thinking Filipinos and found a sympathetic, eager audience in the little boy, who at least gave close heed if he had at first no valuable comments to offer.

In time the child came to ask questions, and they were so sensible that careful explanation was given, and questions were not dismissed with the statement that these things were for grown-ups, a statement which so often repels the childish zeal for knowledge. Not many mature people in those days held so serious converse as the priest and his child friend, for fear of being overheard and reported, a danger which even then existed in the Philippines.

That the old Filipino priest of Rizal’s novels owed something to the author’s recollections of Father Leoncío is suggested by a chapter in “Noli Me Tangere.” Ibarra, viewing Manila by moonlight on the first night after his return from Europe, recalls old memories and makes mention of the neighborhood of the Botanical Garden, just beyond which the friend and mentor of his youth had died. Father Leoncio Lopez died in Calle Concepción in that vicinity, which would seem to identify him in connection with that scene in the book, rather than numerous others whose names have been sometimes suggested.

Two writings of Rizal recall thoughts of his youthful days. Orie tells how he used to wander down along the lake shore and, looking across the waters, wonder about the people on the other side. Did they, too, he questioned, suffer injustice as the people of his home town did? Was the whip there used as freely, carelessly and unmercifully by the authorities? Had men and women also to be servile and hypocrites to live in peace over there? But among these thoughts, never once did it occur to him that at no distant day the conditions would be changed and, under a government that safeguarded the personal rights of the humblest of its citizens, the region that evoked his childhood wondering was to become part of a province bearing his own name in honor of his labors toward banishing servility and hypocrisy from the character of his countrymen.

The lake district of Central Luzon is one of the most historic regions in the Islands, the May-i probably of the twelfth century Chinese geographer. Here was the scene of the earliest Spanish missionary activity. On the south shore is Kalamba, birthplace of Doctor Rizal, with Biñan, the residence of his father’s ancestors, to the northwest, and on the north shore the land to which reference is made above. Today this same region at the north bears the name of Rizal Province in his honor.

The other recollection of Rizal’s youth is of his first reading lesson. He did not know Spanish and made bad work of the story of the “Foolish Butterfly,” which his mother had selected, stumbling over the words and grouping them without regard to the sense. Finally Mrs. Rizal took the book from her son and read it herself, translating the tale into the familiar Tagalog used in their home. The moral is supposed to be obedience, and the young butterfly was burned and died because it disregarded the parental warning not to venture too close to the alluring flame. The reading lesson was in the evening and by the light of a coconut-oil lamp, and some moths were very appropriately fluttering about its cheerful blaze. The little boy watched them as his mother read and he missed the moral, for as the insects singed their wings and fluttered to their death in the flame he forgot their disobedience and found no warning in it for him. Rather he envied their fate and considered that the light was so fine a thing that it was worth dying for. Thus early did the notion that there are things worth more than life enter his head, though he could not foresee that he was to be himself a martyr and that the day of his death would before long be commemorated in his country to recall to his countrymen lessons as important to their national existence as his mother’s precept was for his childish welfare.

When he was four the mystery of life’s ending had been brought home to him by the death of a favorite little sister, and he shed the first tears of real sorrow, for until then he had only wept as children do when disappointed in getting their own way. It was the first of many griefs, but he quickly realized that life is a constant struggle and he learned to meet disappointments and sorrows with the tears in the heart and a smile on the lips, as he once advised a nephew to do.

At seven José made his first real journey; the family went to Antipolo with the host of pilgrims who in May visit the mountain shrine of Our Lady of Peace and Safe Travel. In the early Spanish days in Mexico she was the special patroness of voyages to America, especially while the galleon trade lasted; the statue was brought to Antipolo in 1672.

A print of the Virgin, a souvenir of this pilgrimage, was, according to the custom of those times, pasted inside José’s wooden chest when he left home for school; later on it was preserved in an album and went with him in all his travels. Afterwards it faced Bougereau’s splendid conception of the Christ-mother, as one who had herself thus suffered, consoling another mother grieving over the loss of a son. Many years afterwards Doctor Rizal was charged with having fallen away from religion, but he seems really rather to have experienced a deepening of the religious spirit which made the essentials of charity and kindness more important in his eyes than forms and ceremonies.

Yet Rizal practiced those forms prescribed for the individual even when debarred from church privileges. The lad doubtless got his idea of distinguishing between the sign and the substance from a well-worn book of explanations of the church ritual and symbolism “intended for the use of parish priests.” It was found in his library, with Mrs. Rizal’s name on the flyleaf. Much did he owe his mother, and his grateful recognition appears in his appreciative portrayal of maternal affection in his novels.

His parents were both religious, but in a different way. The father’s religion was manifested in his charities; he used to keep on hand a fund, of which his wife had no account, for contributions to the necessitous and loans to the irresponsible. Mrs. Rizal attended to the business affairs and was more careful in her handling of money, though quite as charitably disposed. Her early training in Santa Rosa had taught her the habit of frequent prayer and she began early in the morning and continued till late in the evening, with frequent attendance in the church. Mr. Rizal did not forget his church duties, but was far from being so assiduous in his practice of them, and the discussions in the home frequently turned on the comparative value of words and deeds, discussions that were often given a humorous twist by the husband when he contrasted his wife’s liberality in prayers with her more careful dispensing of money aid.

Not many homes in Kalamba were so well posted on events of the outside world, and the children constantly heard discussions of questions which other households either ignored or treated rather reservedly, for espionage was rampant even then in the Islands. Mrs. Rizal’s literary training had given her an acquaintance with the better Spanish writers which benefited her children; she told them the classic tales in style adapted to their childish comprehension, so that when they grew older they found that many noted authors were old acquaintances. The Bible, too, played a large part in the home. Mrs. Rizal’s copy was a Spanish translation of the Latin Vulgate, the version authorized by her Church but not common in the Islands then. Rizal’s frequent references to Biblical personages and incidents are not paralleled in the writings of any contemporary Filipino author.

The frequent visitors to their home, the church, civil and military authorities, who found the spacious Rizal mansion a convenient resting place on their way to the health resort at Los Baños, brought something of the city, and a something not found by many residents even there, to the people of this village household. Oftentimes the house was filled, and the family would not turn away a guest of less rank for the sake of one of higher distinction, though that unsocial practice was frequently followed by persons who forgot their self-respect in toadying to rank.

Little José did not know Spanish very well, so far as conversational usage was concerned, but his mother tried to impress on him the beauty of the Spanish poets and encouraged him in essays at rhyming which finally grew into quite respectable poetical compositions. One of these was a drama in Tagalog which so pleased a municipal captain of the neighboring village of Paete, who happened to hear it while on a visit to Kalamba, that the youthful author was paid two pesos for the production. This was as much money as a field laborer in those days would have earned in half a month; although the family did not need the coin, the incident impressed them with the desirability of cultivating the boy’s talent.

José was nine years old when he was sent to study in Biñan. His master there, Justiniano Aquino Cruz, was of the old school and Rizal has left a record of some of his maxims, such as “Spare the rod and spoil the child,” “The letter enters with blood,” and other similar indications of his heroic treatment of the unfortunates under his care. However, if he was a strict disciplinarian, Master Justiniano was also a conscientious instructor, and the boy had been only a few months under his care when the pupil was told that he knew as much as his master, and had better go to Manila to school. Truthful José repeated this conversation without the modification which modesty might have suggested, and his father responded rather vigorously to the idea and it was intimated that in the father’s childhood pupils were not accustomed to say that they knew as much as their teachers. However, Master Justiniano corroborated the child’s statement, so that preparations for José’s going to Manila began to be made. This was in the Christmas vacation of 1871.

Biñan had been a valuable experience for young Rizal. There he had met a host of relatives and from them heard much of the past of his father’s family. His maternal grandfather’s great house was there, now inhabited by his mother’s half-brother, a most interesting personage.

This uncle, José Alberto, had been educated in British India, spending eleven years in a Calcutta missionary school. This was the result of an acquaintance which his father had made with an English naval officer who visited the Philippines about 1820, the author of “An Englishman’s Visit to the Philippines.” Lorenzo Alberto, the grandfather, himself spoke English and had English associations. He had also liberal ideas and preferred the system under which the Philippines were represented in the Cortes and were treated not as a colony but as part of the homeland and its people were considered Spaniards.

The great Biñan bridge had been built under Lorenzo Alberto’s supervision, and for services to the Spanish nation during the expedition to Cochin-China–probably liberal contributions of money–he had been granted the title of Knight of the American Order of Isabel the Catholic, but by the time this recognition reached him he had died, and the patent was made out to his son.

An episode well known in the village–its chief event, if one might judge from the conversation of the inhabitants–was a visit which a governor of Hongkong had made there when he was a guest in the home of Alberto. Many were the tales told of this distinguished Englishman, who was Sir John Bowring, the notable polyglot and translator into English of poetry in practically every one of the dialects of Europe. His achievements along this line had put him second or third among the linguists of the century. He was also interested in history, and mentioned in his Biñan visit that the Hakluyt Society, of which he was a Director, was then preparing to publish an exceedingly interesting account of the early Philippines that did more justice to its inhabitants than the regular Spanish historians. Here Rizal first heard of Morga, the historian, whose book he in after years made accessible to his countrymen. A desire to know other languages than his own also possessed him and he was eager to rival the achievements of Sir John Bowring.

In his book entitled “A Visit to the Philippine Islands,” which was translated into Spanish by Mr. José del Pan, a liberal editor of Manila, Sir John Bowring gives the following account of his visit to Rizal’s uncle:

“We reached Biñan before sunset …. First we passed between files of youths, then of maidens; and through a triumphal arch we reached the handsome dwelling of a rich mestizo, whom we found decorated with a Spanish order, which had been granted to his father before him. He spoke English, having been educated at Calcutta, and his house–a very large one–gave abundant evidence that he had not studied in vain the arts of domestic civilization. The furniture, the beds, the table, the cookery, were all in good taste, and the obvious sincerity of the kind reception added to its agreeableness. Great crowds were gathered together in the square which fronts the house of Don José Alberto.”

The Philippines had just had a liberal governor, De la Torte, but even during this period of apparent liberalness there existed a confidential government order directing that all letters from Filipinos suspected of progressive ideas were to be opened in the post. This violation of the mails furnished the list of those who later suffered in the convenient insurrection of ’72.

An agrarian trouble, the old disagreement between landlords and tenants, had culminated in an active outbreak which the government was unable to put down, and so it made terms by which, among other things, the leader of the insurrection was established as chief of a new civil guard for the purpose of keeping order. Here again was another preparation for ’72, for at that time the agreement was forgotten and the officer suffered punishment, in spite of the immunity he had been promised.

Religious troubles, too, were rife. The Jesuits had returned from exile shortly before, and were restricted to teaching work in those parishes in the missionary district where collections were few and danger was great. To make room for those whom they displaced the better parishes in the more thickly settled regions were taken from Filipino priests and turned over to members of the religious Orders. Naturally there was discontent. A confidential communication from the secular archbishop, Doctor Martinez, shows that he considered the Filipinos had ground for complaint, for he states that if the Filipinos were under a non-Catholic government like that of England they would receive fairer treatment than they were getting from their Spanish co-religionaries, and warns the home government that trouble will inevitably result if the discrimination against the natives of the country is continued.

The Jesuit method of education in their newly established “Ateneo Municipal” was a change from that in the former schools. It treated the Filipino as a Spaniard and made no distinctions between the races in the school dormitory. In the older institutions of Manila the Spanish students lived in the Spanish way and spoke their own language, but Filipinos were required to talk Latin, sleep on floor mats and eat with their hands from low tables. These Filipino customs obtained in the hamlets, but did not appeal to city lads who had become used to Spanish ways in their own homes and objected to departing from them in school. The disaffection thus created was among the educated class, who were best fitted to be leaders of their people in any dangerous insurrection against the government.

However, a change had to take place to meet the Jesuit competition, and in the rearrangement Filipino professors were given a larger share in the management of the schools. Notable among these was Father Burgos. He had earned his doctor’s degree in two separate courses, was among the best educated in the capital and by far the most public-spirited and valiant of the Filipino priests.

He enlisted the interest of many of the older Filipino clergy and through their contributions subsidized a paper, E1 Eco Filipino, which spoke from the Filipino standpoint and answered the reflections which were the stock in trade of the conservative organ, for the reactionaries had an abusive journal just as they had had in 1821 and were to have in the later days.

Such were the conditions when José Rizal got ready to leave home for school in Manila, a departure which was delayed by the misfortunes of his mother. His only, and elder, brother, Paciano, had been a student in San José College in Manila for some years, and had regularly failed in passing his examinations because of his outspokenness against the evils of the country. Paciano was a great favorite with Doctor Burgos, in whose home he lived and for whom he acted as messenger and go-between in the delicate negotiations of the propaganda which the doctor was carrying on.

In February of ’72 all the dreams of a brighter and freer Philippines were crushed out in that enormous injustice which made the mutiny of a few soldiers and arsenal employés in Cavite the excuse for deporting, imprisoning, and even shooting those whose correspondence, opened during the previous year, had shown them to be discontented with the backward conditions in the Philippines.

Doctor Burgos, just as he had been nominated to a higher post in the Church, was the chief victim. Father Gomez, an old man, noted for charity, was another, and the third was Father Zamora. A reference in a letter of his to “powder,” which was his way of saying money, was distorted into a dangerous significance, in spite of the fact that the letter was merely an invitation to a gambling game. The trial was a farce, the informer was garroted just when he was on the point of complaining that he was not receiving the pardon and payment which he had been promised for his services in convicting the others. The whole affair had an ugly look, and the way it was hushed up did not add to the confidence of the people in the justice of the proceedings. The Islands were then placed under military law and remained so for many years.

Father Burgos’s dying advice to Filipinos was for them to be educated abroad, preferably outside of Spain, but if they could do no better, at least go to the Peninsula. He urged that through education only could progress be hoped for. In one of his speeches he had warned the Spanish government that continued oppressive measures would drive the Filipinos from their allegiance and make them wish to become subjects of a freer power, suggesting England, whose possessions surrounded the Islands.

Doctor Burgos’s idea of England as a hope for the Philippines was borne out by the interest which the British newspapers of Hongkong took in Philippine affairs. They gave accounts of the troubles and picked flaws in the garbled reports which the officials sent abroad.

Some zealous but unthinking reactionary at this time conceived the idea of publishing a book somewhat similar to that which had been gotten out against the Constitution of Cadiz. “Captain Juan” was its name; it was in catechism form, and told of an old municipal captain who deserved to be honored because he was so submissively subservient to all constituted authority. He tries to distinguish between different kinds of liberty, and the especial attention which he devotes to America shows how live a topic the great republic was at that time in the Islands. This interest is explained by the fact that an American company had just then received a grant of the northern part of Borneo, later British North Borneo, for a trading company. It was believed that the United States had designs on the Archipelago because of treaties which had been negotiated with the Sultan of Sulu and certain American commercial interests in the Far East, which were then rather important.

Americans, too, had become known in the Philippines through a soldier of fortune who had helped out the Chinese government in suppressing the rebellion in the neighborhood of Shanghai. “General” F. T. Ward, from Massachusetts, organized an army of deserters from European ships, but their lack of discipline made them undesirable soldiers, and so he disbanded the force. He then gathered a regiment of Manila men, as the Filipinos usually found as quartermasters on all ships sailing in the East were then called. With the aid of some other Americans these troops were disciplined and drilled into such efficiency that the men came to have the title among the Chinese of the “Ever-Victorious” army, because of the almost unbroken series of successes which they had experienced. A partial explanation, possibly, of their fighting so well is that they were paid only when they won.

The high praise given the Filipinos at this time was in contrast to the disparagement made of their efforts in Indo-China, where in reality they had done the fighting rather than their Spanish officers. When a Spaniard in the Philippines quoted of the Filipino their customary saying, “Poor soldier, worse sacristan,” the Filipinos dared make no open reply, but they consoled themselves with remembering the flattering comments of “General” Ward and the favorable opinion of Archbishop Martinez.

References to Filipino military capacity were banned by the censors and the archbishop’s communication had been confidential, but both became known, for despotisms drive its victims to stealth and to methods which would not be considered creditable under freer conditions.

CHAPTER V

Jagor’s Prophecy

RIZAL’S first home in Manila was in a nipa house with Manuel Hidalgo, later to be his brother-in-law, in Calle Espeleta, a street named for a former Filipino priest who had risen to be bishop and governor-general. This spot is now marked with a tablet which gives the date of his coming as the latter part of February, 1872.

Rizal’s own recollections speak of June as being the date of the formal beginning of his studies in Manila. First he went to San Juan de Letran and took an examination in the Catechism. Then he went back to Kalamba and in July passed into the Ateneo, possibly because of the more favorable conditions under which the pupils were admitted, receiving credit for work in arithmetic, which in the other school, it is said, he would have had to restudy. This perhaps accounts for the credit shown in the scholastic year 1871-72. Until his fourth year Rizal was an externe, as those residing outside of the school dormitory were then called. The Ateneo was very popular and so great was the eagerness to enter it that the waiting list was long and two or three years’ delay was not at all uncommon.

There is a little uncertainty about this period; some writers have gone so far as to give recollections of childhood incidents of which Rizal was the hero while he lived in the house of Doctor Burgos, but the family deny that he was ever in this home, and say that he has been confused with his brother Paciano.

The greatest influence upon Rizal during this period was the sense of Spanish judicial injustice in the legal persecutions of his mother, who, though innocent, for two years was treated as a criminal and held in prison.

Much of the story is not necessary for this narrative, but the mother’s troubles had their beginning in the attempted revenge of a lieutenant of the Civil Guard, one of a body of Spaniards who were no credit to the mother country and whom Rizal never lost opportunity in his writings of painting in their true colors. This official had been in the habit of having his horse fed at the Mercado home when he visited their town from his station in Biñan, but once there was a scarcity of fodder and Mr. Mercado insisted that his own stock was entitled to care before he could extend hospitality to strangers. This the official bitterly resented. His opportunity for revenge soon came, and was not overlooked. A disagreement between José Alberto, the mother’s brother in Biñan, and his wife, also his cousin, to whom he had been married when they were both quite young, led to sensational charges which a discreet officer would have investigated and would assuredly have then realized to be unfounded. Instead the lieutenant accepted the most ridiculous statements, brought charges of attempted murder against Alberto and his sister, Mrs. Rizal, and evidently figured that he would be able to extort money from the rich man and gratify his revenge at the same time.

Now comes a disgruntled judge, who had not received the attention at the Mercado home which he thought his dignity demanded. Out of revenge he ordered Mrs. Rizal to be conducted at once to the provincial prison, not in the usual way by boat, but, to cause her greater annoyance, afoot around the lake. It was a long journey from Kalamba to Santa Cruz, and the first evening the guard and his prisoner came to a village where there was a festival in progress. Mrs. Rizal was well known and was welcomed in the home of one of the prominent families. The festivities were at their height when the judge, who had been on horseback and so had reached the town earlier, heard that the prisoner, instead of being in the village calaboose, was a guest of honor and apparently not suffering the annoyance to which he had intended to subject her. He strode to the house, and, not content to knock, broke in the door, splintered his cane on the poor constable’s head, and then exhausted himself beating the owner of the house.

These proceedings were revealed in a charge of prejudice which Mrs. Rizal’s lawyers urged against the judge who at the same time was the one who decided the case and also the prosecutor. The Supreme Court agreed that her contention was correct and directed that she be discharged from custody. To this order the judge paid due respect and ordered her release, but he said that the accusation of unfairness against him was contempt of court, and gave her a longer sentence under this charge than the previous one from which she had just been absolved. After some delay the Supreme Court heard of this affair and decided that the judge was right. But, because Mrs. Rizal had been longer in prison awaiting trial than the sentence, they dated back her imprisonment, and again ordered her release. Here the record gets a little confused because it is concerned with a story that her brother had sixteen thousand pesos concealed in his cell, and everybody, from the Supreme Court down, seemed interested in trying to locate the money.

While the officials were looking for his sack of gold, Alberto gave a power of attorney to an overintelligent lawyer who worded his authority so that it gave him the right to do everything which his principal himself could have done “personally, legally and ecclesiastically.” From some source outside, but not from the brother, the attorney heard that Mrs. Rizal had had money belonging to Alberto, for in the extensive sugar-purchasing business which she carried on she handled large sums and frequently borrowed as much as five thousand pesos from this brother. Anxious to get his hands on money, he instituted a charge of theft against her, under his power of attorney and acting in the name of his principal. Mrs. Rizal’s attorney demurred to such a charge being made without the man who had lent the money being at all consulted, and held that a power of attorney did not warrant such an action. In time the intelligent Supreme Court heard this case and decided that it should go to trial; but later, when the attorney, acting for his principal, wanted to testify for him under the power of attorney, they seem to have reached their limit, for they disapproved of that proposal.

Anyone who cares to know just how ridiculous and inconsistent the judicial system of the Philippines then was would do well to try to unravel the mixed details of the half dozen charges, ranging from cruelty through theft to murder, which were made against Mrs. Rizal without a shadow of evidence. One case was trumped up as soon as another was finished, and possibly the affair would have dragged on till the end of the Spanish administration had not her little daughter danced before the Governor-General once when he was traveling through the country, won his approval, and when he asked what favor he could do for her, presented a petition for her mother’s release. In this way, which recalls the customs of primitive nations, Mrs. Rizal finally was enabled to return to her home.

Doctor Rizal tells us that it was then that he first began to lose confidence in mankind. A story of a school companion, that when Rizal recalled this incident the red came into his eyes, probably has about the same foundation as the frequent stories of his weeping with emotion upon other people’s shoulders when advised of momentous changes in his life. Doctor Rizal did not have these Spanish ways, and the narrators are merely speaking of what other Spaniards would have done, for self-restraint and freedom from exhibitions of emotion were among his most prominent characteristics.

Some time during Rizal’s early years of school came his first success in painting. It was the occasion of a festival in Kalamba; just at the last moment an important banner was accidentally damaged and there was not time to send to Manila for another. A hasty consultation was held among the village authorities, and one councilman suggested that José Rizal had shown considerable skill with the brush and possibly he could paint something that would pass. The gobernadorcillo proceeded to the lad’s home and explained the need. Rizal promptly went to work, under the official’s direction, and speedily produced a painting which the delighted municipal executive declared was better than the expensive banner bought in Manila. The achievement was explained to all the participants in the festival and young José was the hero of the occasion.

During intervals of school work Rizal found time to continue his modeling in clay which he procured from the brickyard of a cousin at San Pedro Macati.

Rizal’s uncle, José Alberto, had played a considerable part in his political education. He was influential with the Regency in Spain, which succeeded Queen Isabel when that sovereign became too malodorous to be longer tolerated, and he was the personal friend of the Regent, General Prim, whose motto, “More liberal today than yesterday, more liberal tomorrow than today,” he was fond of quoting. He was present in Madrid at the time of General Prim’s assassination and often told of how this wise patriot, recognizing the unpreparedness of the Spanish people for a republic, opposed the efforts for what would, he knew, result in as disastrous a failure as had been France’s first effort, and how he lost his life through his desire to follow the safer course of proceeding gradually through the preparatory stage of a constitutional monarchy. Alberto was made by him a Knight of the Order of Carlos III, and, after Prim’s death, was created by King Amadeo a Knight Commander, the step higher in the Order of Isabel the Catholic.

Events proved Prim’s wisdom, as Alberto was careful to observe, for King Amadeo was soon convinced of the unfitness of his people for even a constitutional monarchy, told them so, resigned his throne, and bade them farewell. Then came a republic marked by excesses such as even the worst monarch had not committed; among them the dreadful massacre of the members of the filibustering party on the steamer Virginius in Cuba, which would have caused war with the United States had not the Americans been deluded into the idea that they were dealing with a sister republic. America and Switzerland had been the only nations which had recognized Spain’s new form of government. Prim sought an alliance with America, for he claimed that Spain should be linked with a country which would buy Spanish goods and to which Spain could send her products. France, with whom the Bourbons wished to be allied, was a competitor along Spain’s own lines.

During the earlier disturbances in Spain a party of Carlists were sent to the Philippine Islands; they were welcomed by the reactionary Spaniards, for devotion to King Carlos had been their characteristic ever since the days when Queen Isabel had taken the throne that in their opinion belonged to the heir in the male line. Rizal frequently makes mention of this disloyalty to the ruler of Spain on the part of those who claimed to be most devoted Spaniards.

Along with the stories of these troubles which Rizal heard during his school days in Manila were reports of how these exiles had established themselves in foreign cities, Basa in Hongkong, Regidor in London, and Tavera in Paris. At their homes in these cities they gave a warm welcome to such Filipinos as traveled abroad and they were always ready to act as guardians for Filipino students who wished to study in their cities, Many availed themselves of these opportunities and it came to be an ambition among those in the Islands to get an education which they believed was better than that which Spain afforded. There was some ground for such a belief, because many of the most prominent successful men of Spanish and Philippine birth were men whose education had been foreign. A well-known instance in Manila was the architect Roxas, father of the present Alcalde of Manila, who learned his profession in England and was almost the only notable builder in Manila during his lifetime.

Paciano Rizal, José’s elder brother, had retired from Manila on the death of Doctor Burgos and devoted himself to farming; in some ways, perhaps, his career suggested the character of Tasio, the philosopher of “Noli Me Tangere.” He was careful to see that his younger brother was familiar with the liberal literature with which he had become acquainted through Doctor Burgos.

The first foreign book read by Rizal, in a Spanish translation, was Dumas’s great novel, “The Count of Monte Cristo,” and the story of the wrongs suffered by the prisoner of the Château d’If recalled the injustice done his mother. Then came the book which had greatest influence upon the young man’s career; this was a Spanish translation of Jagor’s “Travels in the Philippines,” the observations of a German naturalist who had visited the Islands some fifteen years before. This latter book, among other comments, suggested that it was the fate of the North American republic to develop and bring to their highest prosperity the lands which Spain had conquered and Christianized with sword and cross. Sooner or later, this German writer believed, the Philippine Islands could no more escape this American influence than had the countries on the mainland, and expressed the hope that one day the Philippines would succumb to the same influence; he felt, however, that it was desirable first for the Islanders to become better able to meet the strong competition of the vigorous young people of the New World, for under Spain the Philippines had dreamed away its past.

The exact title of the book is “Travels | in the | Philippines. | By F. Jagor. | With numerous illustrations and a Map | London: | Chapman and Hall, 193, Piccadilly. | 1875.” The title of the Spanish translation reads, “Viajes | por | Filipinas | de F. Jagor | Traducidos del Alemán | por S. Vidal y Soler | Ingeniero de Montes | Edición illustrada con numerosos grabados | Madrid: Imprenta, Estereopidea y Galvanoplastia de Ariban y Ca. | (Sucesores de Rivadencyra) | Impresores de Camara de S. M. | Calle del Duque de Osuna, núm 3. 1875,” The following extract from the book will show how marvelously the author anticipated events that have now become history:

“With the altered condition of things, however, all this has disappeared. The colony can no longer be kept secluded from the world. Every facility afforded for commercial intercourse is a blow to the old system, and a great step made in the direction of broad and liberal reforms. The more foreign capital and foreign ideas and customs are introduced, increasing the prosperity, enlightenment, and self-esteem of the population, the more impatiently will the existing evils be endured.

England can and does open her possessions unconcernedly to the world. The British colonies are united to the mother country by the bond of mutual advantage, viz., the produce of raw material by means of English capital, and the exchange of the same for English manufactures. The wealth of England is so great, the organization of her commerce with the world so complete, that nearly all the foreigners even in the British possessions are for the most part agents for English business houses, which would scarcely be affected, at least to any marked extent, by a political dismemberment. It is entirely different with Spain, which possesses the colony as an inherited property, and without the power of turning it to any useful account.

Government monopolies rigorously maintained, insolent disregard and neglect of the half-castes and powerful creoles, and the example of the United States, were the chief reasons of the downfall of the American possessions. The same causes threaten ruin to the Philippines; but of the monopolies I have said enough.

Half-castes and creoles, it is true are not, as they formerly were in America, excluded from all orificial appointments; but they feel deeply hurt and injured through the crowds of place-hunters which the frequent changes of Ministers send to Manilla. The influence, also, of the American element is at least visible on the horizon, and will be more noticeable when the relations increase between the two countries. At present they are very slender. The trade in the meantime follows in its old channels to England and to the Atlantic ports of the United States. Nevertheless, whoever desires to form an opinion upon the future history of the Philippines, must not consider simply their relations to Spain, but must have regard to the prodigious changes which a few decades produce on either side of our planet.

For the first time in the history of the world the mighty powers on both sides of the ocean have commenced to enter upon a direct intercourse with one another–Russia, which alone is larger than any two other parts of the earth; China, which contains within its own boundaries a third of the population of the world; and America, with ground under cultivation nearly sufficient to feed treble the total population of the earth. Russia’s further rôle in the Pacific Ocean is not to be estimated at present.

The trade between the two other great powers will therefore be presumably all the heavier, as the rectification of the pressing need of human labour on the one side, and of the corresponding overplus on the other, will fall to them.

“The world of the ancients was confined to the shores of the Mediterranean; and the Atlantic and Indian Oceans sufficed at one time for our traffic. When first the shores of the Pacific re-echoed with the sounds of active commerce, the trade of the world and the history of the world may be really said to have begun. A start in that direction has been made; whereas not so very long ago the immense ocean was one wide waste of waters, traversed from both points only once a year. From 1603 to 1769 scarcely a ship had ever visited California, that wonderful country which, twenty-five years ago, with the exception of a few places on the coast, was an unknown wilderness, but which is now covered with flourishing and prosperous towns and cities, divided from sea to sea by a railway, and its capital already ranking the third of the seaports of the Union; even at this early stage of its existence a central point of the world’s commerce, and apparently destined, by the proposed junction of the great oceans, to play a most important part in the future.

In proportion as the navigation of the west coast of America extends the influence of the American element over the South Sea, the captivating, magic power which the great republic exercises over the Spanish colonies[1] will not fail to make itself felt also in the Philippines. The Americans are evidently destined to bring to a full development the germs originated by the Spaniards. As conquerors of modern times, they pursue their road to victory with the assistance of the pioneer’s axe and plough, representing an age of peace and commercial prosperity in contrast to that bygone and chivalrous age whose champions were upheld by the cross and protected by the sword.

A considerable portion of Spanish America already belongs to the United States, and has since attained an importance which could not possibly have been anticipated either under the Spanish Government or during the anarchy which followed. With regard to permanence, the Spanish system cannot for a moment be compared with that of America. While each of the colonies, in order to favour a privileged class by immediate gains, exhausted still more the already enfeebled population of the metropolis by the withdrawal of the best of its ability, America, on the contrary, has attracted to itself from all countries the most energetic element, which, once on its soil and, freed from all fetters, restlessly progressing, has extended its power and influence still further and further. The Philippines will escape the action of the two great neighbouring powers all the less for the fact that neither they nor their metropolis find their condition of a stable and well-balanced nature.

It seems to be desirable for the natives that the above-mentioned views should not speedily become accomplished facts, because their education and training hitherto have not been of a nature to prepare them successfully to compete with either of the other two energetic, creative, and progressive nations. They have, in truth, dreamed away their best days.”

This prophecy of Jagor’s made a deep impression upon Rizal and seems to furnish the explanation of his life work. Henceforth it was his ambition to arouse his countrymen to prepare themselves for a freer state. He dedicated himself to the work which Doctor Jagor had indicated as necessary. It seems beyond question that Doctor Rizal, as early as 1876, believed that America would sometime come to the Philippines, and wished to prepare his countrymen for the changed conditions that would then have to be met. Many little incidents in his later life confirm this view: his eagerness to buy expensive books on the United States, such as his early purchase in Barcelona of two different “Lives of the Presidents of the United States”; his study of the country in his travel across it from San Francisco to New York; the reference in “The Philippines in a Hundred Years”; and the studies of the English Revolution and other Anglo-Saxon influences which culminated in the foundation of the United States of America.

Besides the interest he took in clay modeling, to which reference has already been made, Rizal was expert in carving. When first in the Ateneo he had carved an image of the Virgin of such grace and beauty that one of the Fathers asked him to try an image of the Sacred Heart. Rizal complied, and produced the carving that played so important a part in his future life. The Jesuit Father had intended to take the image with him to Spain, but in some way it was left behind and the schoolboys put it up on the door of their dormitory. There it remained for nearly twenty years, constantly reminding the many lads who passed in and out of the one who teachers and pupils alike agreed was the greatest of all their number, for Rizal during these years was the schoolboy hero of the Ateneo, and from the Ateneo came the men who were most largely concerned in making the New Philippines. The image itself is of batikulin, an easily carved wood, and shows considerable skill when one remembers that an ordinary pocketknife was the simple instrument used in its manufacture. It was recalled to Rizal’s memory when he visited the Ateneo upon his first return from Spain and was forbidden the house by the Jesuits because of his alleged apostasy, and again in the chapel of Fort Santiago, where it played an important part in what was called his conversion.

The proficiency he attained in the art of clay modeling is evidenced by many of the examples illustrated in this volume. They not only indicate an astonishing versatility, but they reveal his very characteristic method of working–a characteristic based on his constant desire to adapt the best things he found abroad to the conditions of his own country. The same characteristic appears also in most of his literary work, and in it there is no servile imitation; it is careful and studied selection, adaptation and combination. For example, the composition of a steel engraving in a French art journal suggested his model in clay of a Philippine wild boar; the head of the subject in a painting in the Luxembourg Gallery and the rest of a figure in an engraving in a newspaper are combined in a statuette he modeled in Brussels and sent, in May, 1890, to Valentina Ventura in place of a letter; a clipping from a newspaper cut is also adapted for his model of “The Vengeance of the Harem”; and as evidence of his facility of expressing himself in this medium, his clay modeling of a Dapitan woman may be cited. One day while in exile he saw a native woman clearing up the street in front of her home preparatory to a festival; the movements and the attitudes of the figure were so thoroughly typical and so impressed themselves on his mind that he worked out this statuette from memory.

In a literary way Rizal’s first pretentious effort was a melodrama in one act and in verse, entitled “Junta al Pasig” (Beside the Pasig), a play in honor of the Virgin, which was given in the Ateneo to the great edification of a considerable audience, who were enthusiastic in their praise and hearty in their applause, but the young author neither saw the play nor paid any attention to the manner of its reception, for he was downstairs, intent on his own diversions and heedless of what was going on above.

Thursday was the school holiday in those days, and Rizal usually spent the time at the Convent of La Concordia, where his youngest sister, Soledad, was a boarder. He was a great friend of the little one and a welcome visitor in the Convent; he used to draw pictures for her edification, sometimes teasing her by making her own portrait, to which he gave exaggerated ears to indicate her curiosity. Then he wrote short satirical skits, such as the following, which in English doggerel quite matches its Spanish original:

“The girls of Concordia College
Go dressed in the latest of styles– Bangs high on their foreheads for knowledge– But hungry their grins and their smiles!”

Some of these girls made an impression upon José, and one of his diary entries of this time tells of his rude awakening when a girl, some years his elder, who had laughingly accepted his boyish adoration, informed him that she was to marry a relative of his, and he speaks of the heart-pang with which he watched the carromata that carried her from his sight to her wedding.

José was a great reader, and the newspapers were giving much attention to the World’s Fair in Philadelphia which commemorated the first centennial of American independence, and published numerous cuts illustrating various interesting phases of American life. Possibly as a reaction from the former disparagement of things American, the sentiment in the Philippines was then very friendly. There was one long account of the presentation of a Spanish banner to a Spanish commission in Philadelphia, and the newspapers, in speaking of the wonderful progress which the United States had made, recalled the early Spanish alliance and referred to the fact that, had it not been for the discoveries of the Spaniards, their new land would not have been known to Europe.

Rizal during his last two years in the Ateneo was a boarder. Throughout his entire course he had been the winner of most of the prizes. Upon receiving his Bachelor of Arts diploma he entered the University of Santo Tomás; in the first year he studied the course in philosophy and in the second year began to specialize in medicine.

The Ateneo course of study was a good deal like that of our present high school, though not so thorough nor so advanced. Still, the method of instruction which has made Jesuit education notable in all parts of the world carried on the good work which the mother’s training had begun. The system required the explanation of the morrow’s lesson, questioning on the lesson of the day and a review of the previous day’s work. This, with the attention given to the classics, developed and quickened faculties which gave Rizal a remarkable power of assimilating knowledge of all kinds for future use.

The story is told that Rizal was undecided as to his career, and wrote to the rector of the Ateneo for advice; but the Jesuit was then in the interior of Mindanao, and by the time the answer, suggesting that he should devote himself to agriculture, was received, he had already made his choice. However, Rizal did continue the study of agriculture, besides specializing in medicine, carrying on double work as he took the course in the Ateneo which led to the degree of land surveyor and agricultural expert. This work was completed before he had reached the age fixed by law, so that he could not then receive his diploma, which was not delivered to him until he had attained the age of twenty-one years.

In the “Life” of Rizal published in Barcelona after his death a brilliant picture is painted of how Rizal might have followed the advice of the rector of the Atenco, and have lived a long, useful and honorable life as a farmer and gobernadorcillo of his home town, respected by the Spaniards, looked up to by his countrymen and filling an humble but safe lot in life. Today one can hardly feel that such a career would have been suited to the man or regret that events took the course they did.

Poetry was highly esteemed in the Ateneo, and Rizal frequently made essays in verse, often carrying his compositions to Kalamba for his mother’s criticisms and suggestions. The writings of the Spanish poet Zorilla were making a deep impression upon him at this time, and while his schoolmates seemed to have been more interested in their warlike features, José appears to have gained from them an understanding of how Zorilla sought to restore the Spanish people to their former dignity, rousing their pride through recalling the heroic events in their past history. Some of the passages in the melodrama, “Junta al Pasig,” already described, were evidently influenced by his study of Zorilla; the fierce denunciation of Spain which is there put in the mouth of Satan expresses, no doubt, the real sentiments of Rizal.

In 1877 a society known as the Liceo Literario-Artistica (Lyceum of Art and Literature) offered a prize for the best poem by a native. The winner was Rizal with the following verses, “Al Juventud Filipino” (To the Philippine Youth). The prize was a silver pen, feather-shaped and with a gold ribbon running through it.

To the Philippine Youth

Theme: “Growth”

(Translation by Charles Derbyshire)

Hold high the brow serene,
O youth, where now you stand;
Let the bright sheen
Of your grace be seen,
Fair hope of my fatherland!

Come now, thou genius grand,
And bring down inspriation;
With thy mighty hand,
Swifter than the wind’s volation,
Raise the eager mind to highter station.

Come down with pleasing light
Of art and science to the fight,
O youth, and there untie
The chains that heavy lie,
Your spirit free to blight.

See how in flaming zone
Amid the shadows thrown,
The Spaniard’s holy hand
A crown’s resplendent band
Proffers to this Indian land.

Thou, who now wouldst rise
On wings of rich emprise,
Seeking from Olympian skies
Songs of sweetest strain,
Softer than ambrosial rain;

Thou, whose voice divine
Rivals Philomel’s refrain,
And with varied line
Through the night benign
Frees mortality from pain;

Thou, who by sharp strife
Wakest thy mind to life;
And the memory bright
Of thy genius’ light
Makest immortal in its strength;

And thou, in accents clear
of Phoebus, to Apells dear;
Or by the brush’s magic art
Takest from nature’s store a part, To fix it on the simple canvas’ length;

Go forth, and then the sacred fire
Of thy genius to the laurel may aspire; To spread around the fame,
And in victory acclaim,
Through wider spheres the human name.

Day, O happy day,
Fair Filipinas, for thy land!
So bless the Power today
That places in thy way
This favor and this fortune grand.

The next competition at the Licco was in honor of the fourth centennial of the death of Cervantes; it was open to both Filipinos and Spaniards, and there was a dispute as to the winner of the prize. It is hard to figure out just what really happened; the newspapers speak of Rizal as winning the first prize, but his certificate says second, and there seems to have been some sort of compromise by which a Spaniard who was second was put at the head. Newspapers, of course, were then closely censored, but the liberal La Oceania contains a number of veiled allusions to medical poets, suggesting that for the good of humanity they should not be permitted to waste their time in verse-making. One reference quotes the title of Rizal’s first poem in saying that it was giving a word of advice “To the Philippine Youth,” and there are other indications that for some considerable time the outcome of this contest was a very live topic in the city of Manila.

Rizal’s poem was an allegory, “The Council of the Gods”–“El consejo de los Dioses.” It was an exceedingly artistic appreciation of the chief figure in Spanish literature. The rector of the Ateneo had assisted his former student by securing for him needed books, and though Rizal was at that time a student in Santo Tomás, the rivalries were such that he was still ranked with the pupils of the Jesuits and his success was a corresponding source of elation to the Ateneo pupils and alumni. Some people have stated that Father Evaristo Arias, a notably brilliant writer of the Dominicans, was a competitor, a version I once published, but investigation shows that this was a mistake. However, sentiment in the University against Rizal grew, until matters became so unpleasant that he felt it time to follow the advice of Father Burgos and continue his education outside of the Islands.

Just before this incident Rizal had been the victim of a brutal assault in Kalamba; one night when he was passing the barracks of the Civil Guard he noted in the darkness a large body, but did not recognize who it was, and passed without any attention to it. It turned out that the large body was a lieutenant of the Civil Guard, and, without warning or word of any kind, he drew his sword and wounded Rizal in the back. Rizal complained of this outrage to the authorities and tried several times, without success, to see the Governor-General. Finally he had to recognize that there was no redress for him. By May of 1882 Rizal had made up his mind to set sail for Europe, and his brother, Paciano, equipped him with seven hundred pesos for the journey, while his sister, Saturnina, intrusted to him a valuable diamond ring which might prove a resource in time of emergency.

José had gone to Kalamba to attend a festival there, when Mr. Hidalgo, from Manila, notified him that his boat was ready to sail. The telegram, asking his immediate return to the city, was couched in the form of advice of the condition of a patient, and the name of the steamer, Salvadora, by a play on words, was used in the sense of “May save her life.” Rizal had previously requested of Mr. Ramirez, of the Puerta del Sol store, letters of introduction to an Englishman, formerly in the Philippines, who was then living in Paris. He said nothing more of his intentions, but on his last night in the city, with his younger sister as companion, he drove all through the walled city and its suburbs, changing horses twice in the five hours of his farewell. The next morning he embarked on the steamer, and there yet remains the sketch which he made of his last view of the city, showing its waterfront as it appeared from the departing steamer. To leave town it was necessary to have a passport; his was in the name of José Mercado, and had been secured by a distant relative of his who lived in the Santa Cruz district.

After five days’ journey the little steamer reached the English colony of Singapore. There Rizal saw a modern city for the first time. He was intensely interested in the improvements. Especially did the assured position of the natives, confident in their rights and not fearful of the authorities, arouse his admiration. Great was the contrast between the fear of their rulers shown by the Filipinos and the confidence which the natives of Singapore seemed to have in their government.

At Singapore, Rizal transferred to a French mail Steamer and seems to have had an interesting time making himself understood on board. He had studied some French in his Ateneo course, writing an ode which gained honors, but when he attempted to speak the language he was not successful in making Frenchmen understand him. So he resorted to a mixed system of his own, sometimes using Latin words and making the changes which regularly would have occurred, and when words failed, making signs, and in extreme cases drawing pictures of what he wanted. This versatility with the pencil, for many of his offhand sketches had humorous touches that almost carried them into the cartoon class, interested officers and passengers, so that the young student had the freedom of the ship and a voyage far from tedious.

The passage of the Suez Canal, a glimpse of Egypt, Aden, where East and West meet, and the Italian city of Naples, with its historic castle, were the features of the trip which most impressed him.

CHAPTER VI

The Period of Preparation

Rizal disembarked at Marseilles, saw a little of that famous port, and then went by rail to Barcelona, crossing the Pyrenees, the desolate ruggedness of which contrasted with the picturesque luxuriance of his tropical home, and remained a day at the frontier town of Port-Bou. The customary Spanish disregard of tourists compared very unfavorably with the courteous attention which he had remarked on his arrival at Marseilles, for the custom house officers on the Spanish frontier rather reminded him of the class of employes found in Manila.

At Barcelona he met many who had been his schoolmates in the Ateneo and others to whom he was known by name. It was the custom of the Filipino students there to hold reunions every other Sunday at the café, for their limited resources did not permit the daily visits which were the Spanish custom. In honor of the new arrival a special gathering occurred in a favorite café in Plaza de Catalonia. The characteristics of the Spaniards and the features of Barcelona were all described for Rizal’s benefit, and he had to answer a host of questions about the changes which had occurred in Manila. Most of his answers were to the effect that old defects had not yet been remedied nor incompetent officials supplanted, and he gave a rather hopeless view of the future of their country. Somewhat in this gloomy mood, he wrote home for a newly established Tagalog newspaper of Manila, his views of “Love of country,” an article not so optimistic as most of his later writings.

In Barcelona he remained but a short time, long enough, however, to see the historic sights around that city, which was established by Hannibal, had numbered many noted Romans among its residents, and in later days was the scene of the return of Columbus from his voyages in the New World, bringing with him samples of Redskins, birds and other novel products of the unknown country. Then there were the magnificent boulevards, the handsome dwellings, the interest which the citizens took in adorning their city and the pride in the results, and above all, the disgust at all things Spanish and the loyalty to Catalonia, rather than to the “mother-fatherland.”

The Catalan was the most progressive type in Spain, but he had no love for his compatriots, was ever complaining of their “mañana” habits and of the evils that were bound to exist in a country where Church and State were so inextricably intermingled. Many Catalans were avowedly republicans. Signs might be seen on the outside of buildings telling of the location of republican clubs, unpopular officials were hooted in the streets, the newspapers were intemperate in their criticism of the government, and a campaign was carried on openly which aimed at changing from a monarchy to a democracy, without any apparent molestation from the authorities. All these things impressed the lad who had seen in his own country the most respectfully worded complaints of unquestionable abuses treated as treason, bringing not merely punishment, but opprobrium as well.

He, himself, in order to obtain a better education, had had to leave his country stealthily like a fugitive from justice, and his family, to save themselves from persecution, were compelled to profess ignorance of his plans and movements. His name was entered in Santo Tomás at the opening of the new term, with the fees paid, and Paciano had gone to Manila pretending to be looking for this brother whom he had assisted out of the country.

Early in the fall Rizal removed to Madrid and entered the Central University there. His short residence in Barcelona was possibly for the purpose of correcting the irregularity in his passport, for in that town it would be easier to obtain a cedula, and with this his way in the national University would be made smoother. He enrolled in two courses, medicine, and literature and philosophy; besides these he studied sculpture, drawing and art in San Carlos, and took private lessons in languages from Mr. Hughes, a well-known instructor of the city. With all these labors it is not strange that he did not mingle largely in social life, and lack of funds and want of clothes, which have been suggested as reasons for this, seem hardly adequate. José had left Manila with some seven hundred pesos and a diamond ring. Besides, he received funds from his father monthly, which were sent through his cousin, Antonio Rivera, of Manila, for fear that the landlords might revenge themselves upon their tenant for the slight which his son had cast upon their university in deserting it for a Peninsular institution. It was no easy task in those days for a lad from the provinces to get out of the Islands for study abroad.

Rizal frequently attended the theater, choosing especially the higher class dramas, occasionally went to a masked ball, played the lotteries in small amounts but regularly, and for the rest devoted most of his money to the purchase of books. The greater part of these were second-hand, but he bought several standard works in good editions, many with bindings de luxe. Among the books first purchased figure a Spanish translation of the “Lives of the Presidents of the United States,” from Washington to Johnson, morocco bound, gilt-edged, and illustrated with steel engravings–certainly an expensive book; a “History of the English Revolution;” a comparison of the Romans and the Teutons, and several other books which indicated interest in the freer system of the Anglo-Saxons. Later, another “History of the Presidents,” to Cleveland, was added to his library.

The following lines, said to be addressed to his mother, were written about this time, evidently during an attack of homesickness:

“You Ask Me for Verses”

(Translated by Charles Derbyshire)

You bid me now to strike the lyre,
That mute and torn so long has lain; And yet I cannot wake the strain,
Nor will the Muse one note inspire! Coldly it shakes in accents dire,
As if my soul itself to wring,
And when its sound seems but to fling A jest at its own low lament;
So in sad isolation pent,
My soul can neither feel nor sing.

There was a time–ah, ’tis too true– But that time long ago has past–
When upon me the Muse had cast
Indulgent smile and friendship’s due; But of that age now all too few
The thoughts that with me yet will stay; As from the hours of festive play
There linger on mysterious notes,
And in our minds the memory floats Of minstrelsy and music gay.

A plant I am, that scarcely grown,
Was torn from out its Eastern bed, Where all around perfume is shed,
And life but as a dream is known;
The land that I can call my own,

By me forgotten ne’er to be,
Where trilling birds their song taught me, And cascades with their ceaseless roar, And all along the spreading shore
The murmurs of the sounding sea.

While yet in childhood’s happy day,
I learned upon its sun to smile,
And in my breast there seemed the while Seething volcanic fires to play.
A bard I was, and my wish alway
To call upon the fleeting wind,
With all the force of verse and mind: “Go forth, and spread around its fame,
From zone to zone with glad acclaim, And earth to heaven together bind!”

But it I left, and now no more–
Like a tree that is broken and sere– My natal gods bring the echo clear
Of songs that in past times they bore; Wide seas I cross’d to foreign shore,
With hope of change and other fate; My folly was made clear too late,
For in the place of good I sought
The seas reveal’d unto me naught,
But made death’s specter on me wait.

All these fond fancies that were mine, All love, all feeling, all emprise,
Were left beneath the sunny skies, Which o’er that flowery region shine;
So press no more that plea of thine,

For songs of love from out a heart
That coldly lies a thing apart;
Since now with tortur’d soul I haste Unresting o’er the desert waste,
And lifeless gone is all my art.

In Madrid a number of young Filipinos were intense enthusiasts over political agitation, and with the recklessness of youth, were careless of what they said or how they said it, so long as it brought no danger to them. A sort of Philippine social club had been organized by older Filipinos and Spaniards interested in the Philippines, with the idea of quietly assisting toward improved insular conditions, but it became so radical under the influence of this younger majority, that its conservative members were compelled to drop out and the club broke up. The young men were constantly holding meetings to revive it, but never arrived at any effective conclusions. Rizal was present at some of these meetings and suggested that a good means of propaganda would be a book telling the truth about Philippine conditions and illustrated by Filipino artists. At first the project was severely criticised; later a few conformed to the plan, and Rizal believed that his scheme was in a fair way of accomplishment. At the meeting to discuss the details, however, each member of the company wanted to write upon the Filipino woman, and therest of the subjects scarcely interested any of them. Rizal was disgusted with this trifling and dropped the affair, nor did he ever again seem to take any very enthusiastic interest in such popular movements. His more mature mind put him out of sympathy with the younger men. Their admiration gave him great prestige, but his popularity did not arise from comradeship, as he had but very few intimates.

Early in his stay in Madrid, Rizal had come across a second-hand copy, in two volumes, of a French novel, which he bought to improve his knowledge of that language. It was Eugene Sue’s “The Wandering Jew,” that work which transformed the France of the nineteenth century. However one may agree or disagree with its teachings and concede or dispute its literary merits, it cannot be denied that it was the most powerful book in its effects on the century, surpassing even Mrs. Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” which is usually credited with having hurried on the American Civil War and brought about the termination of African slavery in the United States. The book, he writes in his diary, affected him powerfully, not to tears, but with a tremendous sympathy for the unfortunates that made him willing to risk everything in their behalf. It seemed to him that such a presentation of Philippine conditions would certainly arouse Spain, but his modesty forbade his saying that he was going to write a book like the French masterpiece. Still, from this time his recollections of his youth and the stories which he could get from his companions were written down and revised, till finally the half had been prepared of what was finally the novel “Noli Me Tangere.”

Through Spaniards who still remembered José’s uncle, he joined a lodge of Masons called the “Acacia.” At this time few Filipinos in Spain had joined the institution, and those were mostly men much more mature than himself. Thus he met leaders of Spanish national life who were men of state affairs and much more sedate, men with broader views and more settled opinions than the irresponsible class with whom his school companions were accustomed to associate. A distinction must be made between the Masonry of this time and the much more popular institution in which Filipinos later figured so largely when Professor Miguel Morayta became head of the Grand Lodge which for a time was a rival of that to which the “Acacia” owed allegiance, and finally triumphed over it.

In 1884 Rizal had begun his studies in English; he had been studying French during and since his voyage to Spain; Italian was acquired apparently at a time when the exposition of Genoa had attracted Spanish interest toward Italy, and largely through the reading of Italian translations of works which he knew in other languages. German, too, he had started to study, but had not advanced far with it. Thus Rizal was preparing himself for the travels through Europe which he had intended to make from the time when he first left his home, for he well knew that it was only by knowing the language of a country that it would be possible for him to study the people, see in what way they differed from his own, and find out which of their customs and what lessons from their history might be of advantage to the Filipinos.

A feature in Rizal’s social life was a weekly visit to the home of Don Pablo Ortigas y Reyes, a liberal Spaniard who had been Civil Governor of Manila in General de La Torre’s time. Here Filipino students gathered, and were entertained by the charming daughter of the home, Consuelo, who was the person to whom were dedicated the verses of Rizal usually entitled “á la Senorita C. O. y R.”

In Rizal’s later days he found a regular relaxation in playing chess, in which he was skilled, with the venerable ex-president of the short-lived Spanish republic, Pi y Margal. This statesman was accused of German tendencies because of his inclination toward Anglo-Saxon safeguards for liberty, and was a champion of general education as a preparation for a freer Spain.

Rizal usually was present on public occasions in Fillpino circles and took a leading part in them, as, for example, when he delivered the principal address at the banquet given by the Madrid Filipino colony in honor of their artist countrymen, after Luna and Hidalgo had won prizes in the Madrid National exposition. He was also at the New Year’s banquet when the students gathered in the restaurant to bid farewell to the old and usher in the new year, and his was the chief speech, summarizing the remarks of the others.

In 1885, having completed the second of his two courses, with his credentials of licentiate in medicine and also in philosophy and literature, Rizal made a trip through the country provinces to study the Spanish peasant, for the rural people, he thought, being agriculturists, would be most like the farmer folk of his native land. Surely the Filipinos did not suffer in the comparison, for the Spanish peasants had not greatly changed from the day when they were so masterfully described by Cervantes. It seemed to Rizal almost like being in Don Quixote’s land, so many were the figures who might have been the characters in the book.

The fall of ’85 found Rizal in Paris, studying art, visiting the various museums and associating with the Lunas, the Taveras and other Filipino residents of the French capital, for there had been a considerable colony in that city ever since the troubles of 1872 had driven the Tavera family into exile and they had made their home in that city. In Paris a fourth of “Noli Me Tangere” was written, and Rizal specialized in ophthalmology, devoting his attention to those eye troubles that were most prevalent in the Philippines and least understood. His mother’s growing blindness made him covet the skill which might enable him to restore her sight. So successfully did he study that he became the favorite pupil of Doctor L. de Weckert, the leading authority among the oculists of France, and author of a three-volume standard work. Rizal next went to Germany, having continued his studies in its language in the French capital, and was present at Heidelberg on the five hundredth anniversary of the foundation of the University.

Because he had no passport he could only attend lectures, but could not regularly matriculate. He lived in one of the student boarding houses, with a number of law students, and when he was proposed for membership in the Chess Club he was registered in the Club books as being a student of law like the men who proposed him. These Chess Club gatherings were quite a feature of the town, being held in the large saloons with several hundred people present, and the contests of skill were eagerly watched by shrewd and competent judges. Rizal was a clever player, and left something of a record among the experts.

The following lines were written by Rizal in a letter home while he was a student in Germany:

To the Flowers of Heidelberg

(translation by Charles Derbyshire)

Go to my native land, go, foreign flowers, Sown by the traveler on his way;
And there beneath its azure sky,
Where all of my affections lie;
There from the weary pilgrim say,
What faith is his in that land of ours!

Go there and tell how when the dawn, Her early light diffusing,
Your petals first flung open wide; His steps beside chill Neckar drawn,
You see him silent by your side,
Upon its Spring perennial musing.

Saw how when morning’s light,
All your fragrance stealing,
Whispers to you as in mirth
Playful songs of love’s delight,
He, too, murmurs his love’s feeling In the tongue he learned at birth.

That when the sun on Koenigstuhl’s height Pours out its golden flood,
And with its slowly warming light
Gives life vale and grove and wood, He greets that sun, here only upraising, Which in his native land is at its zenith blazing.

And tell there of that day he stood, Near to a ruin’d castle gray,
By Neckar’s banks, or shady wood,
And pluck’d you from beside the way; Tell, too, the tale to you addressed,
And how with tender care,
Your bending leaves he press’d
‘Twixt pages of some volume rare.

Bear then, O flowers, love’s message bear; My love to all the lov’d ones there,
Peace to my country–fruitful land– Faith whereon its sons may stand,
And virtue for its daughters’ care; All those belovéd creatures greet,
That still around home’s altar meet.

And when you come unto its shore,
This kiss I now on you bestow,
Fling where the winged breezes blow; That borne on them it may hover o’er
All that I love, esteem, and adore.

But though, O flowers, you come unto that land, And still perchance your colors hold;
So far from this heroic strand,
Whose soil first bade your life unfold, Still here your fragrance will expand;
Your soul that never quits the earth Whose light smiled on you at your birth.

From Heidelberg he went to Leipzig, then famous for the new studies in psychology which were making the science of the mind almost as exact as that of the body, and became interested in the comparison of race characteristics as influenced by environment, history and language. This probably accounts for the advanced views held by Rizal, who was thoroughly abreast of the new psychology. These ideas were since popularized in America largely through Professor Hugo Munsterberg of Harvard University, who was a fellow-student of Rizal at Heidelberg and also had been at Leipzig.

A little later Rizal went to Berlin and there became acquainted with a number of men who had studied the Philippines and knew it as none whom he had ever met previously. Chief among these was Doctor Jagor, the author of the book which ten years before had inspired in him his life purpose of preparing his people for the time when America should come to the Philippines. Then there was Doctor Rudolf Virchow, head of the Anthropological Society and one of the greatest scientists in the world. Virchow was of intensely democratic ideals, he was a statesman as well as a scientist, and the interest of the young student in the history of his country and in everything else which concerned it, and his sincere earnestness, so intelligently directed toward helping his country, made Rizal at once a prime favorite. Under Virchow’s sponsorship he became a member of the Berlin Anthropological Society.

Rizal lived in the third floor of a corner lodging house not very far from the University; in this room he spent much of his time, putting the finishing touches to what he had previously written of his novel, and there he wrote the latter half of “Noli Me Tangere” The German influence, and absence from the Philippines for so long a time, had modified his early radical views, and the book had now become less an effort to arouse the Spanish sense of justice than a means of education for Filipinos by pointing out their shortcomings. Perhaps a Spanish school history which he had read in Madrid deserves a part of the credit for this changed point of view, since in that the author, treating of Spain’s early misfortunes, brings out the fact that misgovernment may be due quite as much to the hypocrisy, servility and undeserving character of the people as it is to the corruption, tyranny and cruelty of the rulers.

The printer of “Noli Me Tangere” lived in a neighboring street, and, like most printers in Germany, worked for a very moderate compensation, so that the volume of over four hundred pages cost less than a fourth of what it would have done in England, or one half of what it would cost in economical Spain. Yet even at so modest a price, Rizal was delayed in the publication until one fortunate morning he received a visit from a countryman, Doctor Maximo Viola, who invited him to take a pedestrian trip. Rizal responded that his interests kept him in Berlin at that time as he was awaiting funds from home with which to publish a book he had just completed, and showed him the manuscript. Doctor Viola was much interested and offered to use the money he had put aside for the trip to help pay the publisher. So the work went ahead, and when the delayed remittance from his family arrived, Rizal repaid the obligation. Then the two sallied forth on their trip.

After a considerable tour of the historic spots and scenic places in Germany, they arrived at Dresden, where Doctor Rizal was warmly greeted by Doctor A. B. Meyer, the Director of the Royal Saxony Ethnographical Institute. He was an authority upon Philippine matters, for some years before he had visited the Islands to make a study of the people. With a countryman resident in the Philippines, Doctor Meyer made careful and thorough scientific investigations, and his conclusions were more favorable to the Filipinos than the published views of many of the unscientific Spanish observers.

In the Museum of Art at Dresden, Rizal saw a painting of “Prometheus Bound,” which recalled to him a representation of the same idea in a French gallery, and from memory he modeled this figure, which especially appealed to him as being typical of his country.

In Austrian territory he first visited Doctor Ferdinand Blumentritt, whom Rizal had known by reputation for many years and with whom he had long corresponded. The two friends stayed at the Hotel Roderkrebs, but were guests at the table of the Austrian professor, whose wife gave them appetizing demonstrations of the characteristic cookery of Hungary. During Rizal’s stay he was very much interested in a gathering of tourists, arranged to make known the beauties of that picturesque region, sometimes called the Austrian Switzerland, and he delivered an address upon this occasion. It is noteworthy that the present interest in attracting tourists to the Philippines, as an economic benefit to the country, was anticipated by Doctor Rizal and that he was always looking up methods used in foreign countries for building up tourists’ travel.

One day, while the visitors were discussing Philippine matters with their host, Doctor Rizal made an off hand sketch of Doctor Blumentritt, on a scrap of paper which happened to be at hand, so characteristic that it serves as an excellent portrait, and it has been preserved among the Rizal relics which Doctor Blumentritt had treasured of the friend for whom he had so much respect and affection.

With a letter of introduction to a friend of Doctor Blumentritt in Vienna, Nordenfels, the greatest of Austrian novelists, Doctor Viola and Doctor Rizal went on to the capital, where they were entertained by the Concordia Club. So favorable was the impression that Rizal made upon Mr. Nordenfels that an answer was written to the note of introduction, thanking the professor for having brought to his notice a person whom he had found so companionable and whose genius he so much admired. Nordenfels had been interested in Spanish subjects, and was able to discuss intelligently the peculiar development of Castilian civilization and the politics of the Spanish metropolis as they affected the overseas possessions.

After having seen Rome and a little more of Italy, they embarked for the Philippines, again on the French mail, from Marseilles, coming by way of Saigon, where a rice steamer was taken for Manila.

CHAPTER VII

The Period of Propaganda

The city had not altered much during Rizal’s seven years of absence. The condition of the Binondo pavement, with the same holes in the road which Rizal claimed he remembered as a schoolboy, was unchanged, and this recalls the experience of Ybarra in “Noli Me Tangere” on his homecoming after a like period of absence.

Doctor Rizal at once went to his home in Kalamba. His first operation in the Philippines relieved the blindness of his mother, by the removal of a double cataract, and thus the object of his special study in Paris was accomplished. This and other like successes gave the young oculist a fame which brought patients from all parts of Luzon; and, though his charges were moderate, during his seven months’ stay in the Islands Doctor Rizal accumulated over five thousand pesos, besides a number of diamonds which he had bought as a secure way of carrying funds, mindful of the help that the ring had been with which he had first started from the Philippines.

Shortly after his arrival, Governor-General Terrero summoned Rizal by telegraph to Malacañan from Kalamba. The interview proved to be due to the interest in the author of “Noli Me Tangere” and a curiosity to read the novel, arising from the copious extracts with which the Manila censors had submitted an unfavorable opinion when asking for the prohibition of the book. The recommendation of the censor was disregarded, and General Terrero, fearful that Rizal might be molested by some of the many persons who would feel themselves aggrieved by his plain picturing of undesirable classes in the Philippines, gave him for a bodyguard a young Spanish lieutenant, José Taviel de Andrade. The young men soon became fast friends, as they had artistic and other tastes in common. Once they climbed Mr. Makiling, near Kalamba, and placed there, after the European custom, a flag to show that they had reached the summit. This act was at first misrepresented by the enemies of Rizal as planting a German banner, for they started a story that he had taken possession of the Islands in the name of the country where he was educated, which was just then in unfriendly relations with Spain over the question of the ill treatment of the Protestant missionaries in the Caroline Islands. This same story was repeated after the American occupation with the variation that Rizal, as the supreme chief and originator of the ideas of the Katipunan (which in fact he was not–he was even opposed to the society as it existed in his time), had placed there a Filipino banner, in token that the Islands intended to reassume the independent condition of which the Spanish had dispossessed them.

“Noli Me Tangere” circulated first among Doctor Rizal’s relatives; on one occasion a cousin made a special trip to Kalamba and took the author to task for having caricatured her in the character of Doña Victorina. Rizal made no denial, but merely suggested that the book was a mirror of Philippine life, with types that unquestionably existed in the country, and that if anybody recognized one of the characters as picturing himself or herself, that person would do well to correct the faults which therein appeared ridiculous.

A somewhat liberal administration was now governing the Philippines, and efforts were being made to correct the more glaring abuses in the social conditions. One of these reforms proposed that the larger estates should bear their share of the taxes, which it was believed they were then escaping to a great extent. Requests were made of the municipal government of Kalamba, among other towns, for a statement of the relation that the big Dominican hacienda bore to the town, what increase or decrease there might have been in the income of the estate, and what taxes the proprietors were paying compared with the revenue their place afforded.

Rizal interested the people of the community to gather reliable