Note 1 — Chapter VIII · THE GRAPES OF WRATH

His sister Lucia was married to Mariano Herbosa, who in Manila had been Rizal’s dear friend. Herbosa died soon after Rizal’s departure, and his death gave to the friars an opportunity for a revenge as uncouth and revolting as far-fetched. On the ground that Herbosa had not received final absolution before his death, they ordered his body to be dug up and cast out of the church where it had been buried.1 To the family of a sincere Catholic this involved an almost insupportable grief, an almost maddening wrong. That they might give to their action the semblance of legality the friars had telegraphed the archbishop at Manila that Rizal’s brother-in-law had died after neglecting his church duties and abandoning the confessional.2 Then they hypocritically asked what they should do in the case, knowing full well that on such a presentation only one response was possible. Protests and appeals by the family won no mitigation of the harsh sentence; they are said to have been stifled or diverted on the way, so that the archbishop never saw them; and the wife and children must bear the taunts their impotence invited as well as the indignity to the memory of husband and father. It appears that the charges against Herbosa were mere inventions; he had with fidelity performed all his religious duties.