The schoolmaster at Tiani has petitioned for a better location for his school. The old store-room he is using has no roof: he has bought with his own funds books and pictures, and he wishes them not to be ruined. “I’ve heard several complaints against this schoolmaster,” says his Excellency. “I think the best thing would be to suspend him.” “Suspended!” [151] says the secretary. “In the future,” says the governor-general, “all that complain will be suspended.” The well known fact is developed that there are not nearly enough school-houses. Somebody suggests that the cockpits might be used for schools when not needed for the more exalted purpose to which they are dedicated. Horror meets the proposal to interfere, for the sake of mere education, with reasonable sport and with the Government’s revenue. It is probably the worst Government in the world. At the end of the card game the secretary whispers to his Excellency that that woman is around again, the daughter of Cabesang Tales, with her petition. When Tales fled to the tulisanes the authorities, true to form, arrested his aged father in his stead and now hold him in prison. His Excellency looked at him with an expression of impatience and rubbed his hand across his broad forehead. “Carambas! Can’t one be left to eat one’s breakfast in peace?” “This is the third day she has come. She’s a poor girl——” The governor-general scratched the back of his ear and said, “Oh, go along! Have the secretary make out an order to the lieutenant of the Civil Guard for the old man’s release. They sha’n’t say that we’re not clement and merciful.” He looked at Ben-Zayb. The journalist winked. [152] You can see that it is cartoon-making with a vengeance. The mirth is savage. It gives one the shivers. This man taught the methods of peace and rejected every suggestion that reform could be won by physical violence. Yet the way he was walking is clear. In ten years if he had kept on he would himself have been leading an insurrection. It has always been so; in the cloister the sweet gentle spirit dreaming of oppression overcome by reason, and in the streets rude weapons beating off the shackles. As Simoun the jeweler, Ibarra brings dramatic vengeance upon the head of Father Salvi. In Manila is an American prestidigitator who is exhibiting the trick known as the talking head. In this instance the head is supposed to be that of an ancient Egyptian. In the midst of gruesome settings to enhance the effect, it tells to an audience in which Salvi is seated the story of Maria Clara, disguised as an event of four thousand years ago. Salvi, conscience-stricken, falls in a fit. [153]