exile had declined an opportunity to head the
movement which had been initiated on the eve of his deportation. His
name had been used to gather the members together and his portrait
hung in each Katipunan lodge hall, but all this was without Rizal's
consent or even his knowledge.

The members, who had been paying faithfully for four years, felt that
it was time that something besides collecting money was done. Their
restiveness and suspicions led Andres Bonifacio, its head, to resort
to Rizal, feeling that a word from the exile, who had religiously
held aloof from all politics since his deportation, would give the
Katipunan leaders more time to mature their plans. So he sent a
messenger to Dapitan, Pio Valenzuela, a doctor, who to conceal his
mission took with him a blind man. Thus the doctor and his patient
appeared as on a professional visit to the exiled oculist. But though
the interview was successfully secured in this way, its results were
far from satisfactory.

Far from feeling grateful for the consideration for the possible
consequences to him which Valenzuela pretended had prompted the
visit, Rizal indignantly insisted that the country came first. He
cited the Spanish republics of South America, with their alternating
revolutions and despotisms, as a warning against embarking on a change
of government for which the people were not prepared. Education, he
declared, was first necessary, and in his opinion general enlightenment
was the only road to progress. Valenzuela cut short his trip, glad
to escape without anyone realizing that Rizal and he had quarreled.

Bonifacio called Rizal a coward when he heard his emissary's report,
and enjoined Valenzuela to say nothing of his trip. But the truth
leaked out, and there was a falling away in Katipunan membership.

Doctor Rizal's own statement respecting the rebellion and Valenzuela's
visit may fitly be quoted here:

"I had no notice at all of what was being planned until the first or
second of July, in 1896, when Pio Valenzuela came to see me, saying
that an uprising was being arranged. I told him that it was absurd,
etc., etc., and he answered me that they could bear no more. I advised
him that they should have patience, etc., etc. He added then that
he had been sent because they had compassion on my life and that
probably it would compromise me. I replied that they should have
patience and that if anything happened to me I would then prove my
innocence. 'Beside