any complaint to
make about my conduct?"

"Padre, we agreed from the start not to talk of yourself or of myself,
we're speaking generally. The students, besides getting no great
benefit out of the years spent in the classes, often leave there
remnants of their dignity, if not the whole of it."

Padre Fernandez again bit his lip. "No one forces them to study--the
fields are uncultivated," he observed dryly.

"Yes, there is something that impels them to study," replied Isagani
in the same tone, looking the Dominican full in the face. "Besides
the duty of every one to seek his own perfection, there is the desire
innate in man to cultivate his intellect, a desire the more powerful
here in that it is repressed. He who gives his gold and his life to the
State has the right to require of it opporttmity better to get that
gold and better to care for his life. Yes, Padre, there is something
that impels them, and that something is the government itself. It is
you yourselves who pitilessly ridicule the uncultured Indian and deny
him his rights, on the ground that he is ignorant. You strip him and
then scoff at his nakedness."

Padre Fernandez did not reply, but continued to pace about feverishly,
as though very much agitated.

"You say that the fields are not cultivated," resumed Isagani in a
changed tone, after a brief pause. "Let's not enter upon an analysis
of the reason for this, because we should get far away. But you,
Padre Fernandez, you, a teacher, you, a learned man, do you wish a
people of peons and laborers? In your opinion, is the laborer the
perfect state at which man may arrive in his development? Or is it
that you wish knowledge for yourself and labor for the rest?"

"No, I want knowledge for him who deserves it, for him who knows how
to use it," was the reply. "When the students demonstrate that they
love it, when young men of conviction appear, young men who know how
to maintain their dignity and make it respected, then there will be
knowledge, then there will be considerate professors! If there are
now professors who resort to abuse, it is because there are pupils
who submit to it."

"When there are professors, there will be students!"

"Begin by reforming yourselves, you who have need of change, and we
will follow."

"Yes," said Isagani with a bitter laugh, "let us begin it, because
the difficulty is on our side. Well you know what is expected of
a pupil who stands before a professor--you yourself, w