Three years elapsed between the bestowing of his licentiate in medicine and the taking of his degree. The lapse was never explained by Rizal, but the reason was his poverty. His father was now in much distress, and Rizal to prosecute his studies must live with narrow scrimping and sometimes on crusts. He could not afford to pay the fee for his doctor’s degree and went without it until his fortunes mended. But his record of triumphs in philosophy and letters must have balanced all possible regrets for the lack of this laurel while it added to his great fame in the student world. So many scholarships, honors, mentions, “excellents”!—these were the prizes he had won with so much industry. The plan of his career he had now worked out to his satisfaction: he was to visit the foremost countries of Europe, study their institutions, learn the secrets of their progress, and carry home to his countrymen information that might spur them to cast off their lethargy and emerge from the national eclipse. Meantime, he was to perfect himself in his profession that he might add to his usefulness and take up his work among them. From Madrid, therefore, he went to Paris, where he became clinical assistant to Dr. L. de Weckert, one of the most famous oculists of Europe. [66] It was in Paris that he took the first direct steps to his own ruin. While still in Madrid he had come upon the idea of addressing his countrymen through the medium of a novel. He had been reading and studying Mrs. Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and he pondered with awe the far-reaching effect upon history and human progress of that inspired work. The thought occurred to him that similarly wrought pictures of the servitude of the Filipinos might awaken them to a knowledge of the yoke that was slowly crushing them, pictures that might at the same time reveal to the world the justice of the Filipino cause. He went so far as to suggest such a work to the Filipino club at Madrid, the story to be of joint authorship; for he seems to have had doubts of his own ability. When his fellow-members failed to see how great were the opportunities involved he was driven back upon himself, as he so often had been and was to be. From Madrid to Paris the idea grew upon him. At Paris he took his pen and started seriously upon the composition of a story of Philippine life.