Note 15 — Chapter II · SCHOOL-DAYS AND FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The slayings of Fathers Gomez, Burgos, and Zamora took place a few months before José Rizal went to Manila. Almost before Paciano’s face his friend and teacher had been dragged to death. What communication about these things Paciano made to his brother, or how Paciano was moved by the tragedy, we can gather only from what happened afterward; but what it meant to José we know well, for as to that he has left eloquent testimony. Sixteen years afterward he compressed into twenty-two lines of bitter irony the scorn he had of Spain for that day’s work. The tragedy on Bagumbayan Field came at the time when his mother’s persecution was beginning; his departure from home had been delayed by her arrest. He was already burning under the sense of an intolerable wrong; this sharp and gratuitous access of injustice must have pierced him with another wound to brood over.15 All the rest of his life he seemed a lonely and rather melancholy figure. It was here at the Ateneo that his aloofness began. A feeling grew upon him that he was alone in the midst of crowds. It was the counterpart of a sense equally developing in him that the misfortunes of his people were to be the business of his life.