Simoun stopped him with a gesture, and, as the dawn was coming, said to him:  “Young man, I am not warning you to keep my secret, because I know that discretion is one of your good qualities, and even though you might wish to sell me, the jeweler Simoun, the friend of the authorities and of the religious corporations, will always be given more credit than the student Basilio, already suspected of filibusterism, and, being a native, so much the more marked and watched, and because in the profession you are entering upon you will encounter powerful rivals.  After all, even though you have not corresponded to my hopes, the day on which you change your mind, look me up at my house in the Escolta, and I’ll be glad to help you.”

Basilio thanked him briefly and went away.

“Have I really made a mistake?” mused Simoun, when he found himself alone.  “Is it that he doubts me and meditates his plan of revenge so secretly that he fears to tell it even in the solitude of the night?  Or can it be that the years of servitude have extinguished in his heart every human sentiment and there remain only the animal desires to live and reproduce?  In that case the type is deformed and will have to be cast over again.  Then the hecatomb is preparing:  let the unfit perish and only the strongest survive!”

Then he added sadly, as if apostrophizing some one:  “Have patience, you who left me a name and a home, have patience!  I have lost all—­country, future, prosperity, your very tomb, but have patience!  And thou, noble spirit, great soul, generous heart, who didst live with only one thought and didst sacrifice thy life without asking the gratitude or applause of any one, have patience, have patience!  The methods that I use may perhaps not be thine, but they are the most direct.  The day is coming, and when it brightens I myself will come to announce it to you who are now indifferent.  Have patience!”

CHAPTER VIII

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

When Juli opened her sorrowing eyes, she saw that the house was still dark, but the cocks were crowing.  Her first thought was that perhaps the Virgin had performed the miracle and the sun was not going to rise, in spite of the invocations of the cocks.  She rose, crossed herself, recited her morning prayers with great devotion, and with as little noise as possible went out on the batalan.

There was no miracle—­the sun was rising and promised a magnificent morning, the breeze was delightfully cool, the stars were paling in the east, and the cocks were crowing as if to see who could crow best and loudest.  That had been too much to ask—­it were much easier to request the Virgin to send the two hundred and fifty pesos.  What would it cost the Mother of the Lord to give them?  But underneath the image she found only the letter of her father asking for the ransom of five hundred pesos.  There was nothing to do but go, so, seeing that her