“Then why do you advise me to leave?”
“Because in other lands you can be happy, and I cannot; because you are not made to suffer, and because you would hate your country, if some day you should see the cause of your misfortune: and to hate one’s own country is the greatest misery.”
“You are unjust to me,” exclaimed Ibarra, with bitter reproach. “You forget that I have scarcely arrived here, and that I have already sought its welfare.”
“Do not be offended, Señor. I am not reproaching you. Would to God that all might imitate you. But I do not ask for the impossible and you should not be offended if I tell you that your heart deceives you. You love your country because your father has taught you to love it; you love it because you had in it your love, your fortune, your youth; because it smiled on you, and because it has not until now done you an injustice. You love your country as we all love that which makes us happy. But, on that day when you see yourself poor, ragged, hungry, persecuted, denounced and betrayed by your very countrymen, on that day you will curse yourself, your country and all.”
“Your words grieve me,” said Ibarra, resentfully.
Elias bowed his head, meditated and replied:
“I wish to set you right, Señor, and to avoid a miserable future for you. You remember the time when I was talking to you in this same banca and under the light of the same moon. It was a month ago, a few days more or less. Then you were happy. The plea of the unfortunates did not reach you. You disdained their complaints because they were complaints from criminals. You gave ear to their enemies, and, in spite of my reasons and pleas, you put yourself on the side of their oppressors. On you depended at that time whether I should turn criminal or allow my life to be taken in fulfillment of my sacred pledge. God has not permitted it, because the old chief of the bandits has been killed. A month has passed and now you think differently.”
“You are right, Elias, but man is influenced by changes in circumstances. Then I was blind, and obstinate. What did I know? Now misfortune has torn the veil from my eyes. The solitude and misery of my prison life have taught me; now I see the horrible cancer which is sapping the life of society, which hangs to its flesh and which requires violent extirpation. They have opened my eyes; they have made me see the ulcer; they force me to become a criminal. I will be a filibustero, but a true filibustero. I will call upon all the unfortunates, on all who have beating hearts within their breasts, on all who sent you to me.... No, no! I will not be criminal! It is never a crime to fight for one’s country! We for three centuries have given them our hand, we have asked them for their love, we have anxiously wished to call them our brothers. How have they replied? With insults and jests, denying us even the quality of being human beings. There is no God, there is no hope, there is no humanity. There is nothing but the right of force.”
Ibarra was excited. His whole body was trembling.
They passed by the Governor General’s palace, and believed they saw agitation and movement among the guards.