Note 2 — Chapter IV · VOICES OF PROPHECY

At Madrid it was with him as it had been at the Ateneo. In a few weeks the university buzzed about this rare young Filipino that could do so many things brilliantly and lived so much like a Trappist monk. His fellows remarked of him that he had at its best the fine, gracious courtesy characteristic of his people but was no great addition to the university’s social assets. If the cafés, clubs, and other places the students thronged knew little of him, he had two good reasons for keeping to himself and living modestly. His excursion in higher education was financed on slender terms by his father and his brother, and he had work in hand that took all his attention; he must be at all times about his country’s business. To a certain extent when he walked apart he was doing violence to his own nature. By temperament he was no horseman for black care to ride behind. He was frank, cordial, quick, rather sanguine, and appreciative of good company and of conversation with good minds. When he had the luck to fall in with these and loosened the rein upon himself, or when he was with his own circle and forgot the great thing he lived for, he made the common air sparkle with shrewd, witty comment.2 His studies in so many languages had given him an unusual vocabulary; his talk flowed on without a break.