[17] Dr. Craig’s translation, first printed with his “Rizal’s Own Story.” [↑]
CHAPTER XV
THE KATIPUNAN
To his father and mother he wrote urging them to come to Dapitan and make their home on the land that he had bought. In this he must have lightly estimated the rancor or the vigilance of his enemies, or have been imperfectly informed about what was going on in Manila—or both. It was a time when all suspected persons were to be watched with unusual diligence, and of these the Rizal family came first. Meantime, the exile’s fate, of which he was wont to take a somber view, shifted somewhat its familiar aspect of misfortune and sent him one gleam of happiness. In the midst of his lonely state and Promethean miseries adroitly prepared for him, he met a woman that attracted him, and ended by marrying her.
This came about after a strange fashion. All this time he had been faithful to the memory of Leonora.[1] A few months after he had taken up his residence in Dapitan there came thither a patient from Hong-Kong named Taufer, an American engineer, blind, and drawn to Dapitan by the fame of the great oculist.[2] He had with him his adopted daughter Josefina, who promptly fell in love with Rizal. Her real name was Josephine Bracken; her parentage was Irish. Her [[268]]father had been a non-commissioned officer in the British army and stationed at Hong-Kong. When he died he left a large family in extreme poverty. Taufer, who was a kindly man of some means, adopted the youngest child as a matter of charity and then grew to love her as if she had been his own daughter. For seventeen years she had been his daily companion; in the long night of his blindness she was his guide and comforter.