Governor-General Terrero was of this order, and even above its average. He was willing at the instigation of angry friars to assign a spy to watch Rizal but was determined to avoid the silly and stupid crime of shooting or garroting or even exiling a man whose offense was that he had written a novel some persons did not like. In other days and other administrations men had been shot or garroted or exiled on charges as flimsy, but light was breaking in Spain; even in the face of tradition and old frowning privilege, light was breaking. The first rift in the medieval eclipse was driven by the sword of Napoleon. Slowly ever since it has been widening to echoes of the world’s advance elsewhere. In 1888 the governing class in Spain had become aware of the scorn of that world and began to feel a little the sting of it. Not much, then, nor since, as we are to see in this narrative, and might illustrate by other citations. Lo, it was this same Spain, and so late as 1909, that murdered Francisco Ferrer, the most learned man in her dominions, for but teaching her children in the manner of other nations—nations so far in the front of her that, looking back, they could scarce descry the dust of her sluggard footsteps! Terrero, at least, was not indifferent to the verdict of enlightened mankind; yet the pressure upon him to take some action against this atrocious leveler and dangerous character was greater than he could withstand. It came from the power that made or broke governor-generals, the power of the orders, supreme in the Islands, supreme in Spain on any matter that related to the Islands. By the beginning of 1888 their demand had reached a point where he must compromise with it, and he “advised” Rizal to leave the Philippines at once. The word is equivocal and was meant so to be; the real significance of “advice” in this instance was an unofficial order of deportation. [96] Rizal obeyed, but not until he had given to the world new evidence of the versatility of a genius to which there is scarcely a companion in human records. We are to remember, first of all, he was a physician that had chosen diseases of the eye for his specialty, wherein he stood in a place of distinction before his profession. He was next an artist in sculpture and painting; a poet; a master of terse and nervous prose in Spanish, in his native Tagalog, and in ten other languages. He was next a scientist, distinguished in original research, already honored with the regard of leading European minds in many branches of recondite knowledge. This, it will be admitted, is a most unusual range of pursuits. From them economics might be regarded as far removed and negligible. Yet he now showed that his many-sided mind could enlist its energies in even the “dismal science” and his skill in expression could illuminate it.