There is in the town where Juli lives a friar, Father Camorra, of great power in the Government. An old woman urges Juli to go to the convento[6] and beg the intercession of Father Camorra. A word from him will be enough to save Basilio’s life. Juli knows well enough what is the real nature of the sacrifice demanded of her; so many a Filipino girl has walked or been dragged along that road to destruction. The reports about the students grow worse. At last it appears that Basilio has been condemned to death and in twenty-four hours will stand before the firing-squad. Not a hope remains except through the intercession of Father Camorra. The old woman beseeches; still Juli refuses. At last she is forced to the door of the convento. That night a woman, screaming wildly, throws herself from an upper window of the house. When help comes to her she is dead. The body is recognized as that of Juli.[7]
Basilio escapes the executioner. When he learns of the fate of Juli he joins Simoun, the disguised Ibarra, who has tried in vain to interest him in the plans for a revolution.
The other story concerns Isagani, type of the educated and ambitious young Filipino, and Paulita, type of the exquisite native beauty. Isagani is deeply in love. Nevertheless, he puts fidelity to his country above even the idol of his heart. He is a leader among [[226]]the discontented students. They do not think of sedition but only of reforms peacefully achieved, the Rizal idea of progress. An opportunity arising, Isagani speaks with the greatest frankness to Father Fernandez, a Dominican friar, and one of the instructors at the university. Their conversation gives the author a chance to expose the defects in the system of higher education—so called. He does more than expose it; he blasts and withers it.[8] Isagani never hesitates to speak his opinions about these things, though always professing perfect loyalty. He is arrested with the other students in the dog-day fit that has seized upon the authorities. At the news the relatives of Paulita insist that she shall cast over a lover so notorious and so dangerous. It is Rizal and Leonora again. Paulita yields to them; she allows herself to be engaged to Isagani’s rival and the date is fixed for her wedding. It is the date that Simoun selects for the consummation of his plot. Basilio agrees to help him.
Paulita’s relatives are rich; they have invited the most eminent persons in the colony, including the governor-general himself. Simoun, the wealthy jeweler, will be there. He has arranged with bands of tulisanes and certain discontented peasants to gather on that date to attack the city. An explosion like the firing of a cannon is to be their signal.
The guests come bearing or sending beautiful gifts. Simoun presents a lamp of strange and beautiful design—burning. In it is a charge of dynamite sufficient to blow up the house and all in it. This will furnish the signal for the attack. He has told this to Basilio. [[227]]Outside the house of festival, Isagani lingers, hoping to catch one farewell glimpse of the sweetheart he has lost. Basilio sees him and tries to lead him away before the explosion. Isagani refuses to move. In despair Basilio tells him what is afoot about the lamp. Isagani, overwhelmed with horror at the thought that the woman he loves is about to perish, runs into the house, seizes the lighted lamp, throws it into the river, and follows it there before any one has a chance to stop him.[9]
Great excitement follows, in which something of the plot is revealed; and Simoun is unmasked, but not until he has had a chance to escape. He is pursued and wounded. He dies in the house of a Filipino family where he has found refuge. On his death-bed he confesses to a priest his real name and story.[10]
“God will forgive you, Señor Simoun,” says the priest. “He knows that we are fallible. He has seen that you have suffered, and in ordaining that the chastisement of your faults should come as death from the very ones you have instigated to crime, we can see His infinite mercy. He has frustrated your plans one by one, the best conceived, first by the death of Maria Clara, then by a lack of preparation, then in some mysterious way. Let us bow to His will and render Him thanks!”
“According to you, then,” feebly responded the sick man, “His will is that these Islands——”
“Should continue in the condition in which they suffer?” continued the priest, seeing that the other hesitated. “I [[228]]don’t know, sir, I can’t read the thought of the Inscrutable. I know that he has not abandoned those peoples who in their supreme moments have trusted in Him and made Him the judge of their cause. I know His arm has never failed when, justice long trampled upon and every recourse gone, the oppressed have taken up the sword to fight for home and wife and children, for their inalienable rights, which, as the German poet says, shine ever there above, unextinguished and inextinguishable, like the eternal stars themselves. No, God is justice; He cannot abandon His cause, the cause of liberty, without which no justice is possible.”
Nothing could be plainer: Rizal is enforcing with a final warning the lesson of his book.
“Why, then, has He denied me His aid?” asked the sick man in a voice charged with bitter complaint.
“Because you chose means that He could not sanction,” was the severe reply. “The glory of saving a country is not for him that has contributed to its ruin. You have believed that what crime and iniquity have defiled and deformed another crime and another iniquity can purify and redeem. Wrong! Hate never produces anything but monsters; crime never produces anything but criminals. Love alone realizes wonderful works; virtue alone can save! No, if our country is ever to be free it will not be through vice and crime; it will not be so by corrupting its sons, deceiving some and bribing others; no! Redemption presupposes virtue, virtue sacrifice, and sacrifice love!”
“Well, I accept your explanation,” rejoined the sick man, after a pause. “I have been mistaken, but, because I have been mistaken, will that God deny liberty to a people and yet save many who are much worse criminals than I am? What is my mistake compared to the crimes of our rulers? Why has that God to give more heed to my iniquity than to the cries [[229]]of so many innocents? Why has He not stricken me down and then made the people triumph? Why does He let so many worthy and just ones suffer and look complacently upon their tortures?”
“The just and the worthy must suffer in order that their ideas may be known and extended! You must shake or shatter the vase to spread its perfume; you must smite the rock to get the spark! There is something providential in the persecutions of tyrants, Señor Simoun!”
“I knew it,” murmured the sick man, “and therefore I encouraged the tyranny.”
“Yes, my friend, but more corrupt influences than anything else were spread. You fostered the social rottenness without sowing an idea. From this fermentation of vices loathing alone could spring, and if anything were born overnight it would be at best a mushroom, for mushrooms only can spring spontaneously from filth. True it is that the vices of the government are fatal to it; they cause its death, but they kill also the society in whose bosom they are developed. An immoral government presupposes a demoralized people, a conscienceless administration, greedy and servile citizens in the settled parts, outlaws and brigands in the mountains. Like master, like slave! Like government, like country!”
A brief pause ensued, broken at length by the sick man’s voice. “Then, what can be done?”
“Suffer and work!”
“Suffer—work!” echoed the sick man bitterly. “Ah, it’s easy to say that, when you are not suffering, when the work is rewarded. If your God demands such sacrifices from man, man who can scarcely count upon the present and doubts the future, if you had seen what I have, the miserable, the wretched, suffering unspeakable tortures for crimes they have not committed, murdered to cover up the faults and incapacity of others, poor fathers of families torn from their [[230]]homes to work to no purpose upon highways that are destroyed each day and seem only to serve for sinking families into want. Ah, to suffer, to work, is the will of God! Convince them that their murder is their salvation, that their work is the prosperity of the home! To suffer, to work! What God is that?”
“A very just God, Señor Simoun,” replied the priest. “A God who chastises our lack of faith, our vices, the little esteem in which we hold dignity and the civic virtues. We tolerate vice, we make ourselves its accomplices, at times we applaud it; and it is just, very just that we suffer the consequences, that our children suffer them. It is the God of liberty, Señor Simoun, who obliges us to love it, by making the yoke heavy for us—a God of mercy, of equity, who while He chastises us betters us and only grants prosperity to him who has merited it through his efforts. The school of suffering tempers, the arena of combat strengthens the soul.
“I do not mean to say that our liberty will be secured at the sword’s point, for the sword plays but little part in modern affairs, but that we must secure it by making ourselves worthy of it, by exalting the intelligence and the dignity of the individual, by loving justice, right, and greatness, even to the extent of dying for them; and when a people reaches that height God will provide a weapon, the idols will be shattered, the tyranny will crumble like a house of cards, and liberty will shine out like the first dawn.
“Our ills we owe to ourselves alone, so let us blame no one. If Spain should see that we were less complaisant with tyranny and more disposed to struggle and suffer for our rights, Spain would be the first to grant us liberty, because when the fruit of the womb reaches maturity woe unto the mother who would stifle it! So, while the Filipino people has not sufficient energy to proclaim, with head erect and bosom bared its rights to social life, and to guarantee it with its sacrifices, [[231]]with its own blood; while we see our countrymen in private life ashamed within themselves, hear the voice of conscience roar in rebellion and protest, yet in public life keep silence or even echo the words of him who abuses them in order to mock the abused; while we see them wrap themselves up in their egotism and with a forced smile praise the most iniquitous actions, begging with their eyes a portion of the booty—why grant them liberty? With Spain or without Spain they would always be the same, and perhaps worse! Why independence, if the slaves of to-day will be the tyrants of to-morrow? And that they will be such is not to be doubted, for he who submits to tyranny loves it.
“Señor Simoun, when our people is unprepared, when it enters the fight through fraud and force, without a clear understanding of what it is doing, the wisest attempts will fail, and better that they do fail, since why commit the wife to the husband if he does not sufficiently love her, if he is not ready to die for her?”
Padre Florentino felt the sick man catch and press his hand; so he became silent, hoping that the other might speak, but he merely felt a stronger pressure of the hand, heard a sigh, and then profound silence reigned in the room. Only the sea, whose waves were rippled by the night breeze, as though awaking from the heat of the day, sent its hoarse roar, its eternal chant, as it rolled against the jagged rocks. The moon, now free from the sun’s rivalry, peacefully commanded the sky, and the trees of the forest bent down toward one another, telling their ancient legends in mysterious murmurs borne on the wings of the wind.
The sick man said nothing; so Padre Florentino, deeply thoughtful, murmured: “Where are the youth who will consecrate their golden hours, their illusions, and their enthusiasm to the welfare of their native land? Where are the youth who will generously pour out their blood to wash away [[232]]so much shame, so much crime, so much abomination? Pure and spotless must the victim be that the sacrifice may be acceptable! Where are you, youth, who will embody in yourselves the vigor of life that has left our veins, the purity of ideas that has been contaminated in our brains, the fire of enthusiasm that has been quenched in our hearts? We await you, O youth! Come, for we await you!”
Feeling his eyes moisten, he withdrew his hand from that of the sick man, arose, and went to the window to gaze out upon the wide surface of the sea. He was drawn from his meditation by gentle raps at the door. It was the servant asking if he should bring a light.
When the priest returned to the sick man and looked at him in the light of the lamp, motionless, his eyes closed, the hand that had pressed his lying open and extended along the edge of the bed, he thought for a moment that he was sleeping, but noticing that he was not breathing touched him gently, and then realized that he was dead. His body had already commenced to turn cold. The priest fell upon his knees and prayed.