Note 3 — Chapter IV · VOICES OF PROPHECY

His own circle was a group of about a score of Filipino students, and (strange to say) one Englishman and one German, that somehow found themselves to be congenial and elected to meet at one remote café. There they read the newspapers (London), played dominoes and chess, and talked about serious things. It was the opinion of these young men that Rizal came too seldom to their meetings, but whenever he consented to be of the company he was its intellectual electric battery. He liked to play chess and played it well; he liked better to discuss and to learn. One afternoon he came in and announced that he was going away. He sat by the side of the table and drew with his pencil on its bare top a merry caricature of every person present. Then he bade them good-bye and disappeared, and a waiter came with a cloth dipped in kerosene and erased the drawings. The place did not see him again.3 A few years later, the price of those caricatures the waiter so easily expunged would have equaled the value of the café.