Note 7 — Chapter VII · AGAIN IN THE PHILIPPINES

For some weeks the museums of Dresden detained him; now the splendid collection of pictures, and now the unusual specimens in the zoölogical and ethnological museums. Thence he passed to Leitmeritz, old Bohemia, where he began that close and intimate friendship with Dr. Ferdinand Blumentritt, the famous ethnologist, that was to last so long as Rizal lived. For months they had been in correspondence; they had even progressed in their letters to the stage of a more than ordinary esteem; for Rizal, as we have seen, having so many other good gifts, had also this abundantly, that he could cause his real self to shine through the imperfect medium of the written word and make it appear what it was, a spirit of power and grace. That he might be identified at the station by his Austrian friend, Rizal sent in advance a pencil-sketch he had made of himself, and with this in hand Dr. Blumentritt knew him instantly. The high opinion the elder scientist had formed of Rizal’s character and talents must have been justified upon closer acquaintance; it appears that Rizal spent most of his time at the Blumentritts’, and Mrs. Blumentritt signified her approbation of him by cooking for him rare old-time Bohemian dainties, unknown to the restaurants and hotels.7 Thence to Vienna, where he became intimate with Nordenfels, the Austrian novelist, and met other men prominent in literature and art. Upon all these he seems to have left the uniform impress of a mind strong, capacious, and candid, and a soul disciplined and enlightened.