ary, seemed more
solitary still on account of the few steamers that were anchored in
it; the sun was dying behind Mariveles without poetry or enchantment,
without the capricious and richly tinted clouds of happier evenings;
the Anda monument, in bad taste, mean and squat, without style, without
grandeur, looked like a lump of ice-cream or at best a chunk of cake;
the people who were promenading along the Malecon, in spite of their
complacent and contented air, appeared distant, haughty, and vain;
mischievous and bad-mannered, the boys that played on the beach,
skipping flat stones over the surface of the water or searching in
the sand for mollusks and crustaceans which they caught for the mere
fun of catching and killed without benefit to themselves; in short,
even the eternal port works to which he had dedicated more than three
odes, looked to him absurd, ridiculous child's play.

The port, ah, the port of Manila, a bastard that since its conception
had brought tears of humiliation and shame to all! If only after so
many tears there were not being brought forth a useless abortion!

Abstractedly he saluted two Jesuits, former teachers of his, and
scarcely noticed a tandem in which an American rode and excited
the envy of the gallants who were in calesas only. Near the Anda
monument he heard Ben-Zayb talking with another person about
Simoun, learning that the latter had on the previous night been
taken suddenly ill, that he refused to see any one, even the very
aides of the General. "Yes!" exclaimed Isagani with a bitter smile,
"for him attentions because he is rich. The soldiers return from
their expeditions sick and wounded, but no one visits them."

Musing over these expeditions, over the fate of the poor soldiers,
over the resistance offered by the islanders to the foreign yoke, he
thought that, death for death, if that of the soldiers was glorious
because they were obeying orders, that of the islanders was sublime
because they were defending their homes. [49]

"A strange destiny, that of some peoples!" he mused. "Because a
traveler arrives at their shores, they lose their liberty and become
subjects and slaves, not only of the traveler, not only of his heirs,
but even of all his countrymen, and not for a generation, but for
all time! A strange conception of justice! Such a state of affairs
gives ample right to exterminate every foreigner as the most ferocious
monster that the sea can cast up!"

He reflected th