Feeling his eyes moisten, he withdrew his hand from that of the sick man, arose, and went to the window to gaze out upon the wide surface of the sea. He was drawn from his meditation by gentle raps at the door. It was the servant asking if he should bring a light. When the priest returned to the sick man and looked at him in the light of the lamp, motionless, his eyes closed, the hand that had pressed his lying open and extended along the edge of the bed, he thought for a moment that he was sleeping, but noticing that he was not breathing touched him gently, and then realized that he was dead. His body had already commenced to turn cold. The priest fell upon his knees and prayed. So Ibarra dies with his revenge unaccomplished, and the priest takes the box in which the dead man’s great wealth is supposed to be contained and without opening it throws it into the sea. Only an artist would have thought of such an ending. CHAPTER XIII THE SAFE-CONDUCT Failure was all he reaped at Madrid in his efforts to win some measure of justice for his family, a fact that hardly could have astonished him then and seems but normal now. In the seats of authority was no man that loved justice so much as he feared the huge political machine set up by the friars and administered (through particularly appropriate selection) by the ruffian Weyler. Early in 1891, Rizal returned to Paris, where he revisited his former friends, and so passed to Ghent. There he settled himself to the finishing of “El Filibusterismo” and worked without further interruption until the book was done and on its way to the publisher. Powerful influences now seemed to draw him again to the East; it is likely that but for his book he would have gone thither direct from Madrid when he learned how little help he might expect from the gross and inert government. The situation of his family caused him a harrowing anxiety. [159] It was for his sake that they were subjected to the abominable persecutions of the petty tyrants of the existing System. His soul revolted at the idea that they should be thus tormented while he was safely out of the range of his enemies’ venom. After his consultations with the Filipinos in Madrid the gloomy outlook in the Philippines was more than before a burden on his thought. He must have known that this time, as he had forecasted in his writings, revolt would be more than local. He could hardly hope to be allowed to land in the Islands, but Hong-Kong was a convenient point from which to watch developments and to put forth his influence; and as to his family he began to have a purpose that if carried out would take them beyond the power of Spanish officers to hector and to wound. In October, 1891, he sailed for Hong-Kong, where he hoped to establish himself in his profession, to gather his family, and to be ready to help his countrymen with the cautionary wisdom of which he held them to be most in need.