s."

"Another! But don't the classes of the Academy of Drawing, and the
novenaries and the processions, cover themselves with the mantle
of night?"

"The scheme affects the dignity of the University," went on the chubby
youth, taking no notice of the question.

"Affects nothing! The University has to accommodate itself to the needs
of the students. And granting that, what is a university then? Is it
an institution to discourage study? Have a few men banded themselves
together in the name of learning and instruction in order to prevent
others from becoming enlightened?"

"The fact is that movements initiated from below are regarded as
discontent--"

"What about projects that come from above?" interpolated one of the
students. "There's the School of Arts and Trades!"

"Slowly, slowly, gentlemen," protested Sandoval. "I'm not a
friar-lover, my liberal views being well known, but render unto Caesar
that which is Caesar's. Of that School of Arts and Trades, of which I
have been the most enthusiastic supporter and the realization of which
I shall greet as the first streak of dawn for these fortunate islands,
of that School of Arts and Trades the friars have taken charge--"

"Or the cat of the canary, which amounts to the same thing," added
Pecson, in his turn interrupting the speech.

"Get out!" cried Sandoval, enraged at the interruption, which had
caused him to lose the thread of his long, well-rounded sentence. "As
long as we hear nothing bad, let's not be pessimists, let's not be
unjust, doubting the liberty and independence of the government."

Here he entered upon a defense in beautiful phraseology of the
government and its good intentions, a subject that Pecson dared not
break in upon.

"The Spanish government," he said among other things, "has given
you everything, it has denied you nothing! We had absolutism in
Spain and you had absolutism here; the friars covered our soil with
conventos, and conventos occupy a third part of Manila; in Spain
the garrote prevails and here the garrote is the extreme punishment;
we are Catholics and we have made you Catholics; we were scholastics
and scholasticism sheds its light in your college halls; in short,
gentlemen, we weep when you weep, we suffer when you suffer, we have
the same altars, the same courts, the same punishments, and it is
only just that we should give you our rights and our joys."

As no one interrupted him, he became more and more enthusiastic,
unt