Simoun’s purpose from the beginning has been to excite the people to an uprising by which he hopes to win his revenge on friars and Government alike and to free Maria Clara from the nunnery where she has been virtually a prisoner since Ibarra’s arrest, as told in “Noli Me Tangere.” The actual situation in the Islands is illuminated by picturing Simoun as telling some persons that the insurrection is desired by the governor-general to free himself from the friars, and telling others that the friars are planning it to rid themselves of the governor-general. In the chaos through which the social order was drifting, either story was plausible. Simoun in his ceaseless intriguing has manœuvered within his power Quiroga, an influential Chinaman, also a type in those days, who has secret and unseemly dealings with the Government. Through this connection Simoun is able to have his rifles passed through the custom-house as some of Quiroga’s illicit importations. He spreads his nets and lays his plans, tutors his accomplices, distributes his arms, and when all is ready for his explosion he is stunned with the news that so far as Maria Clara is concerned it is too late. She is dead in the convent. There are two other love-stories in the book, both unhappy, both reflexes of Rizal’s own great unhappiness. One is of Basilio and Juli. Basilio is the son of Sisa, the native woman in “Noli Me Tangere,” driven insane by misfortunes and persecutions; Juli is the daughter of Cabesang Tales, driven into brigandage by the exactions of the friars. So slight a thing as a frolic of students brings Basilio and Juli to their tragedy. Some of the students have a supper. It is innocent and insignificant, but the spies watch it. That night pasquinades are pasted upon the doors of the university, pasquinades that the nervous authorities deem seditious. To overwrought minds the bad verses and cheap jocularity of these compositions indicate that the treason must be connected with the students’ supper. Therefore, arrest all the students. The order includes Basilio, who had not attended the fiesta, and whose rooms when searched yield nothing but text-books on medicine. In the rural region where Juli is living, terrible reports are current as to the fate of these students. At one moment they are condemned to be shot; at another the sentence has already been carried out. Then comes news that with the help of influential and wealthy relatives they hope to escape the death-penalty; all except Basilio, who has no wealthy friends nor influence of any kind.