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.
The Victory of Death over Life and Science over Death. Statuettes made by Rizal for Dr. Blumentritt and exhibited in the Dresden Museum of Modern Art.
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 Page 134Page 135note 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. Page 136
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.