and bribery set out to fashion an instrument for the execution of his plans—­a man without faith, patriotism, or conscience—­for the first time in that life, something within rose up and protested against his actions.  He closed his eyes and remained for some time motionless, then rubbed his hand over his forehead, tried to be deaf to his conscience, and felt fear creeping over him.  No, he must not analyze himself, he lacked the courage to turn his gaze toward his past.  The idea of his courage, his conviction, his self-confidence failing him at the very moment when his work was set before him!  As the ghosts of the wretches in whose misfortunes he had taken a hand continued to hover before his eyes, as if issuing from the shining surface of the river to invade the room with appeals and hands extended toward him, as reproaches and laments seemed to fill the air with threats and cries for vengeance, he turned his gaze from the window and for the first time began to tremble.

“No, I must be ill, I can’t be feeling well,” he muttered.  “There are many who hate me, who ascribe their misfortunes to me, but—­”

He felt his forehead begin to burn, so he arose to approach the window and inhale the fresh night breeze.  Below him the Pasig dragged along its silvered stream, on whose bright surface the foam glittered, winding slowly about, receding and advancing, following the course of the little eddies.  The city loomed up on the opposite bank, and its black walls looked fateful, mysterious, losing their sordidness in the moonlight that idealizes and embellishes everything.  But again Simoun shivered; he seemed to see before him the severe countenance of his father, dying in prison, but dying for having done good; then the face of another man, severer still, who had given his life for him because he believed that he was going to bring about the regeneration of his country.

“No, I can’t turn back,” he exclaimed, wiping the perspiration from his forehead.  “The work is at hand and its success will justify me!  If I had conducted myself as you did, I should have succumbed.  Nothing of idealism, nothing of fallacious theories!  Fire and steel to the cancer, chastisement to vice, and afterwards destroy the instrument, if it be bad!  No, I have planned well, but now I feel feverish, my reason wavers, it is natural—­If I have done ill, it has been that I may do good, and the end justifies the means.  What I will do is not to expose myself—­”

With his thoughts thus confused he lay down, and tried to fall asleep.

On the following morning Placido listened submissively, with a smile on his lips, to his mother’s preachment.  When she spoke of her plan of interesting the Augustinian procurator he did not protest or object, but on the contrary offered himself to carry it out, in order to save trouble for his mother, whom he begged to return at once to the province, that very day, if possible.  Cabesang Andang asked him the reason for such haste.