d their
right to rebel, and if matters do not mend they will rebel some day,
and justice will be on their side, with them will go the sympathy
of all honest men, of every patriot in the world! When a people is
denied light, home, liberty, and justice--things that are essential
to life, and therefore man's patrimony--that people has the right to
treat him who so despoils it as we would the robber who intercepts us
on the highway. There are no distinctions, there are no exceptions,
nothing but a fact, a right, an aggression, and every honest man who
does not place himself on the side of the wronged makes himself an
accomplice and stains his conscience.

"True, I am not a soldier, and the years are cooling the little fire
in my blood, but just as I would risk being torn to pieces to defend
the integrity of Spain against any foreign invader or against an
unjustified disloyalty in her provinces, so I also assure you that I
would place myself beside the oppressed Filipinos, because I would
prefer to fall in the cause of the outraged rights of humanity to
triumphing with the selfish interests of a nation, even when that
nation be called as it is called--Spain!"

"Do you know when the mail-boat leaves?" inquired his Excellency
coldly, when the high official had finished speaking.

The latter stared at him fixedly, then dropped his head and silently
left the palace.

Outside he found his carriage awaiting him. "Some day when you declare
yourselves independent," he said somewhat abstractedly to the native
lackey who opened the carriage-door for him, "remember that there
were not lacking in Spain hearts that beat for you and struggled for
your rights!"

"Where, sir?" asked the lackey, who had understood nothing of this
and was inquiring whither they should go.

Two hours later the high official handed in his resignation and
announced his intention of returning to Spain by the next mail-steamer.

CHAPTER XXXII

EFFECT OF THE PASQUINADES

As a result of the events narrated, many mothers ordered their sons
immediately to leave off their studies and devote themselves to
idleness or to agriculture. When the examinations came, suspensions
were plentiful, and he was a rare exception who finished the course,
if he had belonged to the famous association, to which no one paid
any more attention. Pecson, Tadeo, and Juanito Pelaez were all alike
suspended--the first receiving his dismissal with his foolish grin
and decl