nd night, they suspect that
you are only biding your time, they take your eagerness to learn,
your love of study, your very complaisance, for burning desires for
revenge. The day they can get rid of you they will do with you as
they did with me, and they will not let you grow to manhood, because
they fear and hate you!"

"Hate me? Still hate me after the wrong they have done me?" asked
the youth in surprise.

Simoun burst into a laugh. "'It is natural for man to hate those
whom he has wronged,' said Tacitus, confirming the _quos laeserunt et
oderunt_ of Seneca. When you wish to gauge the evil or the good that
one people has done to another, you have only to observe whether
it hates or loves. Thus is explained the reason why many who have
enriched themselves here in the high offices they have filled, on
their return to the Peninsula relieve themselves by slanders and
insults against those who have been their victims. _Proprium humani
ingenii est odisse quern laeseris!"_

"But if the world is large, if one leaves them to the peaceful
enjoyment of power, if I ask only to be allowed to work, to live--"

"And to rear meek-natured sons to send them afterwards to submit to
the yoke," continued Simoun, cruelly mimicking Basilio's tone. "A fine
future you prepare for them, and they have to thank you for a life
of humiliation and suffering! Good enough, young man! When a body
is inert, it is useless to galvanize it. Twenty years of continuous
slavery, of systematic humiliation, of constant prostration, finally
create in the mind a twist that cannot be straightened by the labor
of a day. Good and evil instincts are inherited and transmitted from
father to son. Then let your idylic ideas live, your dreams of a
slave who asks only for a bandage to wrap the chain so that it may
rattle less and not ulcerate his skin! You hope for a little home
and some ease, a wife and a handful of rice--here is your ideal man
of the Philippines! Well, if they give it to you, consider yourself
fortunate."

Basilio, accustomed to obey and bear with the caprices and humors
of Capitan Tiago. was now dominated by Simoun, who appeared to him
terrible and sinister on a background bathed in tears and blood. He
tried to explain himself by saying that he did not consider himself
fit to mix in politics, that he had no political opinions because
he had never studied the question, but that he was always ready to
lend his services the day they might be need