ther for the
comradeship of remembrance or to compare thy life with that about
me, I have seen thy fair face disfigured and distorted by a hideous
social cancer.

Eager for thy health, which is our happiness, and seeking the best
remedy for thy pain, I am about to do with thee what the ancients did
with their sick: they exposed them on the steps of their temples, that
every one who came to adore the divinity within might offer a remedy.

So I shall strive to describe faithfully thy state without extenuation;
to lift a corner of the covering that hides thy sore; sacrificing
everything to truth, even the love of thy glory, while loving, as
thy son, even thy frailties and sins.

Jose Rizal.

AN EAGLE FLIGHT

I.

THE HOUSE ON THE PASIG.

It was toward the end of October. Don Santiago de los Santos, better
known as Captain Tiago, was giving a dinner; and though, contrary to
custom, he had not announced it until that very afternoon, it had
become before evening the sole topic of conversation, not only at
Binondo, but in the other suburbs of Manila, and even in the city
itself. Captain Tiago passed for the most lavish of entertainers,
and it was well known that the doors of his home, like those of his
country, were closed to nobody and nothing save commerce and all
new or audacious ideas. The news spread, therefore, with lightning
rapidity in the world of the sycophants, the unemployed and idle,
whom heaven has multiplied so generously at Manila.

The dinner was given in a house of the Calle de Anloague, which
may yet be recognized, if an earthquake has not demolished it. This
house, rather large and of a style common to the country, stood near
an arm of the Pasig, called the Boco de Binondo, a rio which, like
all others of Manila, washing along the multiple output of baths,
sewers, and fishing grounds serves as a means of transport, and even
furnishes drinking-water, if such be the humor of the Chinese carrier.
Scarcely at intervals of a half-mile is this powerful artery of the
quarter where the traffic is most important, the movement most active,
dotted with bridges; and these, in ruins at one end six months of
the year and inapproachable the remaining six at the other, give
horses a pretext for plunging into the water, to the great surprise of
preoccupied mortals in carriages dozing tranquilly or philosophizing
on the progress of the century.

The house of Captain Tiago was rather low and on lines