This came about after a strange fashion. All this time he had been faithful to the memory of Leonora. [190] A few months after he had taken up his residence in Dapitan there came thither a patient from Hong-Kong named Taufer, an American engineer, blind, and drawn to Dapitan by the fame of the great oculist. [191] He had with him his adopted daughter Josefina, who promptly fell in love with Rizal. Her real name was Josephine Bracken; her parentage was Irish. Her father had been a non-commissioned officer in the British army and stationed at Hong-Kong. When he died he left a large family in extreme poverty. Taufer, who was a kindly man of some means, adopted the youngest child as a matter of charity and then grew to love her as if she had been his own daughter. For seventeen years she had been his daily companion; in the long night of his blindness she was his guide and comforter. If her portraits do her justice, Josephine must have had unusual beauty, but her letters do not reveal in her the intellectual gifts that would have made her an ideal companion for José Rizal. Yet she must have been sympathetic, and he, solitary at the world’s outpost, seems to have been fond of her. When he came to ask her hand in marriage of her guardian, Mr. Taufer was overcome with grief. An hour later, he attempted suicide. He was blind; the examinations of Rizal had shown no chance that his eyesight could be restored; a daughter of his had but lately left him to be married; he had lost his first wife; his second marriage had not been happy; and he felt that without Josephine there was nothing to live for. Rizal came upon him razor in hand about to carry out his threat and narrowly rescued him from himself. [192] After this, a marriage seemed impossible, and Josephine returned to Hong-Kong with Taufer. But the affair had gone so far that already Rizal had made overtures to the parish priest to perform the ceremony. The priest shook his head: there were Rizal’s well known heresies in the way; he could not marry a heretic. Rizal said that if by heresies his political opinions were meant, nothing could induce him to profess any change in them; but if the priest meant religious views, he was ready to declare that he was and had been at all times a faithful son of the Catholic religion and purposed so to remain. The priest thought a declaration to this effect might win past the bishop, who now appeared as the chief obstacle; at least he would send to Cebu to find out. The letter of inquiry he had written and was about to despatch when news came that the engagement had been broken. The letter was never sent.