For all his good passing-mark, he came near to miss the opening he sought. Father Fernando, the Jesuit priest then in charge of the Ateneo, looked upon him without favor. He had come late in the term, for one thing; and then he was so small and slight. Only at the intercession of Dr. Manuel Burgos, a nephew of the priest officially murdered on Bagumbayan Field, the rules were relaxed and the midget from Calamba allowed to come in. For the moment he forgot his forebodings. With joy he put on the school uniform, the white coat called an americana, the necktie, and the rest. When he found himself in the chapel of the Jesuit fathers to hear mass, surrounded with strange faces, a new boy in a new school, he prayed fervently. Then he says he went to the class-room and appraised his teachers and school-fellows, on whom he seems to have looked with preternaturally keen eyes. Father José Bech was a tall man, thin and somewhat stooping, but quick in his movements. His face was ascetic, yet animated. The eyes were small and sunken, the nose sharp and Grecian. His thin lips curved downward. He was a little eccentric, at times being out of humor and intolerant and at other times amusing himself by playing like a child. Some of my schoolmates were interesting enough to warrant mentioning them by name. A boy, or rather a young man from my own province, Florencio Gavino Oliva, was of exceptional talents but only average application. The same was true of Moisés Santiago. He was a mathematician and penman. Also it was true of Gonzalo Manzano. The last named then held the position of Roman Emperor. The title seems incongruous, but Rizal explains that to stimulate the boys in Jesuit colleges the custom was to divide them into two “empires,” one Roman, the other Carthaginian or Greek. These were continually at war—academic. The battles fought were in the class-room, over recitations. Points were scored by discovering errors in the work of the hated foe. Rizal was placed at the bottom of the cohorts of one of these “empires,” a private in the rear ranks. Within a month he was emperor; he had outstripped everybody else. Paciano was there that first day and took him in charge. He would not allow the sensitive little artist to lodge in the Walled City or ancient part of Manila, “which seemed very gloomy to me,” says Rizal, a judgment others might echo. In another quarter of the town, twenty-five minutes away, he was lodged with an old maid, who seemed to have a superfluity of other lodgers and a scarcity of room to stow them in. “I must not speak of my sufferings,” says José, with pious resignation. [38]