Jagor’s Prophecy

RIZAL’S first home in Manila was in a nipa house with Manuel Hidalgo, later to be his brother-in-law, in Calle Espeleta, a street named for a former Filipino priest who had risen to be bishop and
governor-general. This spot is now marked with a tablet which gives the date of his coming as the latter part of February, 1872.

Rizal’s own recollections speak of June as being the date of the formal beginning of his studies in Manila. First he went to San Juan de Letran and took an examination in the Catechism. Then he went back to Kalamba and in July passed into the Ateneo, possibly because of the more favorable conditions under which the pupils were admitted, receiving credit for work in arithmetic, which in the other school, it is said, he would have had to restudy. This perhaps accounts for the credit shown in the scholastic year 1871-72. Until his fourth year Rizal was an externe, as those residing outside of the school dormitory were then called. The Ateneo was very popular and so great was the eagerness to enter it that the waiting list was long and two
or three years’ delay was not at all uncommon.

There is a little uncertainty about this period; some writers have gone so far as to give recollections of childhood incidents of which Rizal was the hero while he lived in the house of Doctor Burgos,
but the family deny that he was ever in this home, and say that he has been confused with his brother Paciano.

The greatest influence upon Rizal during this period was the sense of Spanish judicial injustice in the legal persecutions of his mother, who, though innocent, for two years was treated as a criminal and
held in prison.

Much of the story is not necessary for this narrative, but the mother’s troubles had their beginning in the attempted revenge of a lieutenant of the Civil Guard, one of a body of Spaniards who were no credit
to the mother country and whom Rizal never lost opportunity in his writings of painting in their true colors. This official had been in the habit of having his horse fed at the Mercado home when he visited
their town from his station in Bi˜nan, but once there was a scarcity of fodder and Mr. Mercado insisted that his own stock was entitled to care before he could extend hospitality to strangers. This the
official bitterly resented. His opportunity for revenge soon came, and was not overlooked. A disagreement between Jos´e Alberto, the mother’s brother in Bi˜nan, and his wife, also his cousin, to whom he had been
married when they were both quite young, led to sensational charges which a discreet officer would have investigated and would assuredly have then realized to be unfounded. Instead the lieutenant accepted
the most ridiculous statements, brought charges of attempted murder against Alberto and his sister, Mrs. Rizal, and evidently figured that he would be able to extort money from the rich man and gratify
his revenge at the same time.