and rising
or falling with the caprices of the Pasig,--that brave bridge was no
more. The new Spanish bridge drew Ibarra's attention. Carriages passed
continuously, drawn by groups of dwarf horses, in splendid harness. In
these sat at ease government clerks going to their bureaus, officers,
Chinese, self-satisfied and ridiculously grave monks, canons. In an
elegant victoria, Ibarra thought he recognized Father Damaso, deep
in thought. From an open carriage, where his wife and two daughters
accompanied him, Captain Tinong waved a friendly greeting.

Then came the Botanical Gardens, then old Manila, still enclosed in its
ditches and walls; beyond that the sea; beyond that, Europe, thought
Ibarra. But the little hill of Bagumbayan drove away all fancies. He
remembered the man who had opened the eyes of his intelligence,
taught him to find out the true and the just. It was an old priest,
and the holy man had died there, on that field of execution!

To these thoughts he replied by murmuring: "No, after all, first
the country, first the Philippines, daughters of Spain, first the
Spanish home-land!"

His carriage rolled on. It passed a cart drawn by two horses whose
hempen harness told of the back country. Sometimes there sounded the
slow and heavy tread of a pensive carabao, drawing a great tumbrel;
its conductor, on his buffalo skin, accompanying, with a monotonous and
melancholy chant, the strident creaking of the wheels. Sometimes there
was the dull sound of a native sledge's worn runners. In the fields
grazed the herds, and among them white herons gravely promenaded, or
sat tranquil on the backs of sleepy oxen beatifically chewing their
cuds of prairie grass. Let us leave the young man, wholly occupied
now with his thoughts. The sun which makes the tree-tops burn, and
sends the peasants running, when they feel the hot ground through
their thick shoes; the sun which halts the countrywoman under a clump
of great reeds, and makes her think of things vague and strange--that
sun has no enchantment for him.

While the carriage, staggering like a drunken man over the uneven
ground, passes a bamboo bridge, mounts a rough hillside or descends
its steep slope, let us return to Manila.

IX.

AFFAIRS OF THE COUNTRY.

Ibarra had not been mistaken. It was indeed Father Damaso he had seen,
on his way to the house which he himself had just left.

Maria Clara and Aunt Isabel were entering their carriage when the monk