At Madrid it was with him as it had been at the Ateneo. In a few weeks the university buzzed about this rare young Filipino that could do so many things brilliantly and lived so much like a Trappist monk. His fellows remarked of him that he had at its best the fine, gracious courtesy characteristic of his people but was no great addition to the university’s social assets. If the cafés, clubs, and other places the students thronged knew little of him, he had two good reasons for keeping to himself and living modestly. His excursion in higher education was financed on slender terms by his father and his brother, and he had work in hand that took all his attention; he must be at all times about his country’s business. To a certain extent when he walked apart he was doing violence to his own nature. By temperament he was no horseman for black care to ride behind. He was frank, cordial, quick, rather sanguine, and appreciative of good company and of conversation with good minds. When he had the luck to fall in with these and loosened the rein upon himself, or when he was with his own circle and forgot the great thing he lived for, he made the common air sparkle with shrewd, witty comment. [61] His studies in so many languages had given him an unusual vocabulary; his talk flowed on without a break. His own circle was a group of about a score of Filipino students, and (strange to say) one Englishman and one German, that somehow found themselves to be congenial and elected to meet at one remote café. There they read the newspapers (London), played dominoes and chess, and talked about serious things. It was the opinion of these young men that Rizal came too seldom to their meetings, but whenever he consented to be of the company he was its intellectual electric battery. He liked to play chess and played it well; he liked better to discuss and to learn. One afternoon he came in and announced that he was going away. He sat by the side of the table and drew with his pencil on its bare top a merry caricature of every person present. Then he bade them good-bye and disappeared, and a waiter came with a cloth dipped in kerosene and erased the drawings. The place did not see him again. [62] A few years later, the price of those caricatures the waiter so easily expunged would have equaled the value of the café. He carried to Madrid his favorite notion of life led by time-tables; and, dividing his day into segments, set apart one for general reading. In this his choice was liberal; anything that would be likely to assist his purpose was welcome. French classics, Shakespeare, Goethe, to help his lingual studies; books on modern political questions; history above everything, any history; biography by way of illustration; and the theater (which he attended as often as his purse would allow) for readjustment.