Capitán Tiago breaks off the engagement with his daughter; in his view the word of the friars is sacred, oracular, final. He is one of the great portraits of the book, this Capitán Tiago; a typical Filipino of the class that bent assiduously at the feet of power. The drawing is like many a sketch in Rizal’s note-books, a piece of startling realism. Tiago is a living, talking, sputtering, foolish thing of flesh and blood that we see and hear. Even though we have never seen another being of his kind anywhere, we see him in this picture-making. He is vain, pretentious, fearful, abjectly superstitious, filled with strange notions about the influences of graven images and the grandeur of Spain; a Filipino perverted by some wealth, the allurements of a social ambition, and an education grotesquely awry. Against the ills of the flesh and the chances of loss in the cockpit, he has recourse to the same arcana: so many candles burned before this shrine or that, so many bombs to be exploded at a fiesta, or so many masses bought at current rates. In all things, to cultivate the favor of the friars is the boundary of his more earthly philosophy. Ibarra, rich and eminent, newly returned from Spain with the gloss of a European education fresh upon him, is in his eyes a delectable son-in-law. Ibarra under the ban of the friars is an object of horror. The affection between Ibarra and Maria Clara has the welcome fragrance of purity and exaltation in the midst of these miasmas. They had been playmates in childhood, they had grown up together, they had really plighted their troth when Ibarra went to Europe. He had been chivalrously true to her in all his seven years of travel. He has come back to her sure of her love and looking forward to an early marriage. Upon all such dreams Tiago sets his foot; he not only forbids any further communication with Ibarra, but he favors another lover, one Linares, a feeble-willed young Spaniard brought forward with suspicious haste by Father Damaso. With this candidate, against the vehement protests of Maria Clara, an engagement is quickly made. Meantime, the governor-general comes to the town and hears about the troubles of Ibarra, whose father he had known and admired. The governor-general is a type of many that Spain sent to the Philippines, excellent in purpose, well aware of the malignant fever of friarism, resolved to withstand it, and invariably finding his good resolutions crumbling under him. Yet, in this instance, he will save if he can the son of his old friend from the clutches of the modern Inquisition. Between the friars and the archbishops of Manila is a smoldering feud, for the archbishop is usually chosen outside of the four orders. The governor-general nudges the archbishop; the archbishop cancels the excommunication; and Ibarra, escaped from this damnation, is doomed by the friars to another still worse.