n a grand scale," was
added with mystery.

It was really true that Paulita was going to marry Juanito Pelaez. Her
love for Isagani had gradually waned, like all first loves based
on poetry and sentiment. The events of the pasquinades and the
imprisonment of the youth had shorn him of all his charms. To whom
would it have occurred to seek danger, to desire to share the fate
of his comrades, to surrender himself, when every one was hiding and
denying any complicity in the affair? It was quixotic, it was madness
that no sensible person in Manila could pardon, and Juanito was quite
right in ridiculing him, representing what a sorry figure he cut when
he went to the Civil Government. Naturally, the brilliant Paulita
could no longer love a young man who so erroneously understood social
matters and whom all condemned. Then she began to reflect. Juanito was
clever, capable, gay, shrewd, the son of a rich merchant of Manila,
and a Spanish mestizo besides--if Don Timoteo was to be believed,
a full-blooded Spaniard. On the other hand, Isagani was a provincial
native who dreamed of forests infested with leeches, he was of doubtful
family, with a priest for an uncle, who would perhaps be an enemy to
luxury and balls, of which she was very fond. One beautiful morning
therefore it occurred to her that she had been a downright fool to
prefer him to his rival, and from that time on Pelaez's hump steadily
increased. Unconsciously, yet rigorously, Paulita was obeying the
law discovered by Darwin, that the female surrenders herself to the
fittest male, to him who knows how to adapt himself to the medium in
which he lives, and to live in Manila there was no other like Pelaez,
who from his infancy had had chicanery at his finger-tips. Lent passed
with its Holy Week, its array of processions and pompous displays,
without other novelty than a mysterious mutiny among the artillerymen,
the cause of which was never disclosed. The houses of light materials
were torn down in the presence of a troop of cavalry, ready to fall
upon the owners in case they should offer resistance. There was a
great deal of weeping and many lamentations, but the affair did not
get beyond that. The curious, among them Simoun, went to see those
who were left homeless, walking about indifferently and assuring each
other that thenceforward they could sleep in peace.

Towards the end of April, all the fears being now forgotten, Manila
was engrossed with one topic: the fies