Note 5 — Chapter XVI · “I CAME FROM MARTYRDOM UNTO THIS PEACE”

Before his murderers, before the jeers and savage exultations of the well dressed mob clamoring for his death, throughout the hearing, at the moment of the unjust verdict, he had maintained the same attitude of perfect serenity described as wonderful by all that observed it. Other condemned men have simulated this self-possession; this man had it in truth and not in seeming. Calmly he heard his condemnation, calmly he reëntered the prison where for his last night on earth quarters had been made for him in the chapel. A newspaper reporter came to interview him. He was like a prosperous and well bred host entertaining a cultured friend;5 no eyes, however searching, could discover a joint in that perfect armor of the soul sustained and possessed, without a tremor and without a gloomy thought. To the reporter and to others that had watched him this bearing seemed not bravado but something mystical and inexplicable, but it seemed so only because the source of it was beyond their understanding. He was calm because he had long before in effect given his life to this cause and the shooting of the next day would be only the last incident in a sacrifice already made. Of this there is every indication. What men call the joy of living had since his youth meant to him the joy of serving Filipinas. He seems to have had since the day of his exile to Dapitan a feeling that in other ways his service6 was at an end, but there remained the service of his death. All the hard tests of life had left him unshaken and uncorrupted, a man truly without fear and without reproach. With the same faultless and unpretentious courage he walked forward to meet the end.