obability, being further strengthened by the telegram
received and Simoun's decided unwillingness from the start to be
treated by the doctor from the capital. The jeweler submitted only
to the ministrations of Don Tiburcio, and even to them with marked
distrust. In this situation Padre Florentino was asking himself what
line of conduct he should pursue when the Civil Guard came to arrest
Simoun. His condition would not permit his removal, much less a long
journey--but the telegram said alive or dead.

Padre Florentine ceased playing and approached the window to gaze
out at the sea, whose desolate surface was without a ship, without
a sail--it gave him no suggestion. A solitary islet outlined
in the distance spoke only of solitude and made the space more
lonely. Infinity is at times despairingly mute.

The old man was trying to analyze the sad and ironical smile with
which Simoun had received the news that he was to be arrested. What did
that smile mean? And that other smile, still sadder and more ironical,
with which he received the news that they would not come before eight
at night? What did all this mystery signify? Why did Simoun refuse
to hide? There came into his mind the celebrated saying of St. John
Chrysostom when he was defending the eunuch Eutropius: "Never was a
better time than this to say--Vanity of vanities and all is vanity!"

Yes, that Simoun, so rich, so powerful, so feared a week ago, and
now more unfortunate than Eutropius, was seeking refuge, not at the
altars of a church, but in the miserable house of a poor native priest,
hidden in the forest, on the solitary seashore! Vanity of vanities
and all is vanity! That man would within a few hours be a prisoner,
dragged from the bed where he lay, without respect for his condition,
without consideration for his wounds--dead or alive his enemies
demanded him! How could he save him? Where could he find the moving
accents of the bishop of Constantinople? What weight would his weak
words have, the words of a native priest, whose own humiliation this
same Simoun had in his better days seemed to applaud and encourage?

But Padre Florentine no longer recalled the indifferent reception that
two months before the jeweler had accorded to him when he had tried
to interest him in favor of Isagani, then a prisoner on account of
his imprudent chivalry; he forgot the activity Simoun had displayed in
urging Paulita's marriage, which had plunged Isagani into the fearful