[18] Retana, p. 351. “No! Prófugo? No! Me declararían cómplice del levantamiento!” [↑]
[19] Craig, p. 231; Derbyshire, p. xliii. [↑]
[20] His old friend, Dr. Antonio Maria Regidor of London, was the author of this plan. It went so far that all the papers were drawn up and signed. Retana prints them at pp. 352–353. [↑]
CHAPTER XVI
“I CAME FROM MARTYRDOM UNTO THIS PEACE”
It was November 3, 1896, when Rizal, heavily guarded, passed again through the dark gateway of Fort Santiago, whence he had issued four years before to go to Dapitan. Now his enemies had him wholly in their power; he was dragged to earth at last. Yet for a time they were puzzled how to proceed with him. Dull as they were and remote from the highways of European thought, they were not unaware that the eyes of a scornful world were upon them. Therefore they could not, as in the cases of so many “unvalued men,” shoot him at sunrise on a dunghill. Some pretense of legality must be followed; there must be regard to decency.
But of anything civilized men could call evidence against him or of reason for anything such men could call a trial there was no trace nor suggestion. Say that the Katipunan was all that hysteria described it; not a scrap of paper connected Rizal with it. He was not a member; he had expressly disapproved of its aims; he had been an exile in Dapitan while it was being formed. How then? And what then? In all such dilemmas it had been the practice of the Government of the Philippines to resort to those medieval precedents that best befitted the theory upon which its authority was based. Where required testimony was [[290]]not to be stumbled upon it was usually to be produced with the thumb-screw and the lash; to torture somebody into perjury was the sovereign specific. Upon these promptings the authorities seized Paciano, Rizal’s brother, and exercised upon him their most recondite arts. To his left hand was fitted the terrible screw; at his right were pen and ink and a statement that his brother had part in the Katipunan conspiracy. Then the screw was applied until the victim fainted with the pain. But he would not sign; no, not for all the ingenious torments of their devising. There was iron in the Rizal blood; father and mother had shown it. When the mother had started to trudge around Laguna de Bay, when the father had refused to submit to the tyranny of the friar’s agent, when José had dared to write “Noli Me Tangere,” they had vindicated their tribal inheritance. Paciano was all of the same stern race. Day and night the horror continued; he was trussed up until he fainted again, and then was revived with stimulants for new sufferings, and still he would not sign. Then his mind began to wander; he was plainly unable to sign anything, and the torturers released him.[1]
Meantime José, though undeceived as to his probable fate, fought for his life with the resolute courage of his kin. He knew there was no evidence against him, that before no court with the least respect for justice could he be convicted. But he determined to make that conviction as difficult as possible and as shameful in the eyes of the world. From his prison-house he issued this address: [[291]]