The Indio that had startled the Spanish colony in Manila by daring to call the Philippines “my fatherland” proved his loyalty to the country he adored by serving it with a discriminating zeal. He would have been more picturesque if he had been well galvanized by Chauvin, but less useful. His mind, though powerful, could work in only one way, which was in orderly motions. These prevented him from dwelling so much on his country’s wrongs that he forgot his country’s faults. For this reason, and because he could have no heated bearings in his mental processes, he was Filipinas’s greatest asset. In “Noli Me Tangere” he showed that he understood well the native defects (products of the System) and would spare them no more than he spared the friars. But it was for his countrymen’s good that he rebuked them, like a wise father correcting his children; and whatever might be his employments he never forgot two great vital visions, Filipinas fast bound in the prison-house and education tardily on its way to set her free. With the same purpose of helping this good angel the sooner to smite the prison locks, he now set himself an unusual task. He was to master French; not after the fashion of the schools, for that he already had, nor for the mere pleasure of acquiring it, but to be able to write in it as if it were his native tongue. He knew what he was about in this; if his novels should fail to arouse the Filipinos he was determined to appeal to Europe in behalf of his country, and he conceived that he could best do this in French. Therefore with indefatigable ardor he pursued the French verb and the other phenomena of Gallic speech into their remotest fastnesses. He took what might be called post-postgraduate work in these arid excursions, employing the help of unusual scholars and including colloquial French with French of the Academy. When we come upon the fact that at the end of these labors he was able to prepare as a text-book for French students a volume of French exercises [122] we may perceive that his success was out of the ordinary.