and flee to the barrio, or village, of Balintawak,
a few miles north of Manila, thence to lead the attack on Caloocan
and inaugurate the reign of Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity in the
manner in which Philippine insurrections have generally had a habit
of starting--with the murder of Chinese merchants and the pillage of
their shops. He had from the first reserved for himself the important
office of treasurer in the Katipunan, in addition to being on occasions
president and at all times its ruling spirit, so he now established
himself as dictator and proceeded to appoint a magnificent staff, most
of whom contrived to escape as soon as they were out of reach of his
bolo. Yet he drew considerable numbers about him, for this man, though
almost entirely unlettered, seems to have been quite a personality
among his own people, especially possessed of that gift of oratory
in his native tongue to which the Malay is so preeminently susceptible.

In Manila a special tribunal was constituted and worked steadily,
sometimes through the siesta-hour, for there were times, of which
this was one, when even Spanish justice could be swift. Bagumbayan
began to be a veritable field of blood, as the old methods of
repression were resorted to for the purpose of striking terror into
the native population by wholesale executions, nor did the ruling
powers realize that the time for such methods had passed. It was a
case of sixteenth-century colonial methods fallen into fretful and
frantic senility, so in all this wretched business it is doubtful whim
to pity the more: the blind stupidity of the fossilized conservatives
incontinently throwing an empire away, forfeiting their influence over
a people whom they, by temperament and experience, should have been
fitted to control and govern; or the potential cruelty of perverted
human nature in the dark Frankenstein who would wreak upon the rulers
in their decadent days the most hideous of the methods in the system
that produced him, as he planned his festive holocaust and carmagnole
on the spot where every spark of initiative and leadership among
his people, both good and bad, had been summarily and ruthlessly
extinguished. There is at least a world of reflection in it for the
rulers of men.

In the meantime Rizal, wearying of the quiet life in Dapitan and
doubtless foreseeing the impending catastrophe, had requested leave
to volunteer his services as a physician in the military hospitals
of Cuba,