To the commandant’s house, accordingly, he was assigned. It was but rude commons and a primitive environment. The sudden and cold plunge from the place of respect he had held in Europe and his profitable position in Hong-Kong would have overwhelmed a weaker spirit. Rizal accepted the stern mutations with the unruffled composure that was always his strong anchor in whatsoever difficulties. “No man bears sorrow better,” says the antique Roman of himself; but you would not look for a recrudescence of Marcus Brutus in a Malay of the nineteenth century. In the same spirit he now arranged his time upon a schedule after his invariable custom, and resumed cheerfully a life of study and work. Under the parole he had given that he would make no attempt to escape, he was allowed to go about as he pleased and without observation, for it is singular that this traitor and dangerous character was implicitly trusted even by his enemies so far as any question of personal honor was concerned. He had never a guard in Dapitan. Not only so, but the commandants, one after another, and all the soldiery, from private to highest officers, fell under the potent charm of his manner and became his friends and admirers. The commandants were frequently changed. Each in turn came to Dapitan warned against the perilous prisoner there and therefore bristling with dislike; each went away swearing he was the prince of good fellows and sorry for his fate. At all times he was the most industrious of exiles; he must have had a spirit akin to the genius of perpetual motion. Day after day he plunged into the woods to study the animal life of the region, collect specimens and write elaborate notes about shells, bugs, crawling things, trees, and flowers. He explored the coasts of Mindanao and visited the native villages. With evident enthusiasm he revived his ethnological pleasures and collected native implements, weapons and manufactures, many of which from his hands are now in the museum of Dresden, for instance. [178] True to his natural inclinings, one of his first employments had been to look about him at the chances the children of that region had to gain even the rudiments of education. Finding they had next to nothing, he gathered them about him and began to teach. He was also busy at times with his professional ministrations. Patients began to seek him from Manila, from Hong-Kong, and even from more distant places, so great was his reputation as an oculist. With the fees they paid him he embarked upon beneficent enterprises that revealed another reserve in his resourceful mind.