There, Juan Luna, [106] the Filipino painter, with whom Rizal had formed a close friendship while both were in Madrid, 1882 to 1885, had now made his home and Rizal seems to have rejoiced to renew his associations with his talented countryman. It is certain that the stupidity of race prejudice, which has so many other and blacker wrongs to answer for, has deprived this man of a certain part of his just reward. Yet he was a great painter, the winner of prizes in many European competitions, and an artist that Paris delighted to honor. [107] A contemporary and fellow Filipino, Hidalgo, was hardly less successful; so seldom are their achievements counted in any summary of the Malay that most unjustly America is still unaware of them. Rizal usually spent his Sundays in Luna’s studio, sometimes fencing, sometimes talking art, of which he was still, for all his troubles, distractions, and complex activities, the steadfast worshiper. CHAPTER VIII THE GRAPES OF WRATH Though all this time out of the sight of his enemies in Manila, he seems never to have been out of their minds; authoritative evidence that in his novel he had told the truth about them. Theirs was a hatred not unmixed with reasonable fears of his popularity and of his powerful pen. They waited until he was at a safe distance before they moved against him, and then in a way that verified the ancient adage concerning the union of the essential qualities of bully and coward. They struck at him through his family, left now without defense. 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. [108] 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. [109] 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.