He could in four weeks master a language and could not in a lifetime well comprehend the caveman’s logic of blows. This amiable strabismus half blinded him to what was really impending in his own country. The truth was that the System was slowly forcing a revolt there; not intentionally, but after the manner of all drunken power. To lay bare the iniquities of that System was to send against it the torch and ax. Every page of “Noli Me Tangere” was in effect a call to battle. He never suspected this, but fact it was nevertheless. To imagine, as he at one time imagined, that intrenched greed would without a struggle surrender its privileges and lay by the cracking of its whips was to imagine that which never was nor shall be. The reversion to primitive standards was inaugurated, not by Filipino revolutionists, but by the System itself, which, denying justice, left to the harassed multitudes nothing but revolution. At this crux of his story, when he appeared at Madrid as the champion of an impossible peace, and the eyes and hearts of all his countrymen were turning to him, the time may be good to describe the man that had already wielded so tremendous a power. He was then in his thirty-first year. The first impression one had of him was of wholesome vigor and physical well-being. He was of rather slender build, but all of muscle and sinew compact, for he never remitted his exercises. In height, he was five feet, four inches; coming of what seems to Occidental eyes an undersized people. From long hours at his desk he had contracted a slight stoop. His handsome face retained its fine boyish oval, but rugged character and unshakable firmness were now stamped upon it, and an expression of melancholy. His eyes were still remarked for their brightness. His hands were small and shapely, his feet noticeably small. [142] His voice was low in pitch, of a noble tonality, and so strangely vibrant that one hearing it at its best never forgot it. One of his rules was never to raise it; he spoke always with an identical restraint. With such a voice and with his flow of apt and picturesque language he was equipped for public speaking, in which he had made on several occasions a rather marked success; yet he always thought lightly of the art of oratory and refused to pursue it. Whether among his friends or in his writings he had ordinarily little to say about himself, and there is but one recorded instance when he seemed to give way to the bitter recollections that must at times have assailed him. On this occasion he said to a friend in London with whom he was walking: “I have traveled around the world. I have studied the important nations by personal and direct observation. I have noted well all the races that have contributed to human progress. I speak all their languages and others. And yet,” he added with a melancholy smile, “I am to the friars merely a vulgar half-breed.”