Though all this time out of the sight of his enemies in Manila, he seems never to have been out of their minds; authoritative evidence that in his novel he had told the truth about them. Theirs was a hatred not unmixed with reasonable fears of his popularity and of his powerful pen. They waited until he was at a safe distance before they moved against him, and then in a way that verified the ancient adage concerning the union of the essential qualities of bully and coward. They struck at him through his family, left now without defense.
WOOD CARVING BY RIZAL
His famous statue of the Holy Cross
His sister Lucia was married to Mariano Herbosa, who in Manila had been Rizal’s dear friend. Herbosa died soon after Rizal’s departure, and his death gave to the friars an opportunity for a revenge as uncouth and revolting as far-fetched. On the ground that Herbosa had not received final absolution before his death, they ordered his body to be dug up and cast out of the church where it had been buried.[1] To the family of a sincere Catholic this involved an almost insupportable grief, an almost maddening wrong. That they might give to their action the semblance of legality the friars had telegraphed the archbishop at Manila [[162]]that Rizal’s brother-in-law had died after neglecting his church duties and abandoning the confessional.[2] Then they hypocritically asked what they should do in the case, knowing full well that on such a presentation only one response was possible. Protests and appeals by the family won no mitigation of the harsh sentence; they are said to have been stifled or diverted on the way, so that the archbishop never saw them; and the wife and children must bear the taunts their impotence invited as well as the indignity to the memory of husband and father. It appears that the charges against Herbosa were mere inventions; he had with fidelity performed all his religious duties.
No one connected even remotely or nominally with the bold delineator of friar government was safe; through the persecution of his relatives he himself could be made to suffer. His brother Paciano was now banished to Mindoro on some blown-up charge of thinking sedition. The pretext was nothing; anything would serve, from barratry to simony. Another brother-in-law was still available, Manuel Hidalgo by name. Him the authorities caught on a charge of sacrilege. A child of his had died of cholera, and he had buried it without the ceremonies of the church. The civil law prescribed in cholera cases immediate burial, and the health-officers demanded it. A poor man in such an emergency might well have been distracted between conflicting decrees of church and state. It seems that in other such cases when the head of the family obeyed the civil precepts he heard nothing of sacrilege. But they were not brothers-in-law of Rizal. [[163]]Pounce, came the church upon the wretched offender. The next thing he knew he was deported.[3]
Next two of Rizal’s sisters fell into the same net. Sedition and sacrilege were handy offenses. They could be preferred against anybody for anything.
His father was the next victim. In his case the plain purpose was ruin, to be achieved by means suggested to ill minds through an out-cropping of one man’s childish malice. Mr. Mercado raised prize turkeys. The intendant, or manager, of the Dominican estate, which claimed ownership in all the land in the region of the Mercado homestead, had a nice taste in these birds when skilfully cooked, and it was his pleasing habit to demand from time to time gifts of the choicest of the Mercado turkeys to adorn his own table. The time came when it was no longer possible thus to propitiate the petty tyrant; disease had carried off the firstlings of the flock, and what were left were absolutely needed to replenish the breed.
From homely incidents like these we see the Philippines as they were and illuminate again the unforgettable pages of Rizal’s stories. The intendant made no secret of his purpose to revenge himself; they had at least the virtue of candor, these little satraps. He conceived that his immortal dignity had suffered because he had been refused turkeys when there were no turkeys, and nothing would ease the sting of that burning wrong but retribution. When the next rent-day came, Mr. Mercado found that his rent had been doubled. He paid the increase and made no complaint. The next rent-day he found that again the rate had [[164]]been doubled. This likewise he paid without protest. When the next rent-day came and he found the rate was again increased he made the fatal blunder of appealing to the courts.[4]
Aggrieved members of the governing class must have joyed to learn of so excellent an opportunity to salve their hurts, also, in this medicament of revenge. Here was the father of the hated José Rizal delivered into their hands. They took the case from the justice of the peace at Calamba, in whose jurisdiction it rightfully belonged, and sent it before a judge whose decision they must have felt sure they could control. There had now become involved in the case a question of broader moment. Mr. Mercado’s sturdy resistance had heartened the other tenants to revive the ancient and unsettled issue of the title to the lands. For many years careful men had held that the Dominicans, who assumed to own all this region and to collect all rents from it, had no right to any of it. The select judge before whom came these questions lost no time in deciding them against Mercado and the other tenants. Mercado appealed, and thereby precipitated one of the strangest incidents of the story.