stasio said to me, 'So the
parents want floggings? Why not inflict them on themselves?' As a
result of it all I became sick." Ibarra was listening thoughtfully.

"Scarcely had I recovered when I returned to the school to find the
number of my pupils reduced to a fifth. The better ones had run away
upon the return to the old system, and of those who remained--mostly
those who came to school to escape work at home--not one showed any
joy, not one congratulated me on my recovery. It would have been the
same to them whether I got well or not, or they might have preferred
that I continue sick since my substitute, although he whipped them
more, rarely went to the school. My other pupils, those whose parents
had obliged them to attend school, had gone to other places. Their
parents blamed me for having spoiled them and heaped reproaches on
me for it. One, however, the son of a country woman who visited me
during my illness, had not returned on account of having been made
a sacristan, and the senior sacristan says that the sacristans must
not attend school: they would be dismissed."

"Were you resigned in looking after your new pupils?" asked Ibarra.

"What else could I do?" was the queried reply. "Nevertheless, during my
illness many things had happened, among them a change of curates, so
I took new hope and made another attempt to the end that the children
should not lose all their time and should, in so far as possible, get
some benefit from the floggings, that such things might at least have
some good result for them. I pondered over the matter, as I wished that
even if they could not love me, by getting something useful from me,
they might remember me with less bitterness. You know that in nearly
all the schools the books are in Spanish, with the exception of the
catechism in Tagalog, which varies according to the religious order to
which the curate belongs. These books are generally novenas, canticles,
and the Catechism of Padre Astete, [65] from which they learn about
as much piety as they would from the books of heretics. Seeing the
impossibility of teaching the pupils in Spanish or of translating so
many books, I tried to substitute short passages from useful works
in Tagalog, such as the Treatise on Manners by Hortensio y Feliza,
some manuals of Agriculture, and so forth. Sometimes I would myself
translate simple works, such as Padre Barranera's History of the
Philippines, which I then dictated to the children, with