t be humble. I don't tell
you that you must kiss the hands of the curates, for I know that
you have a delicate sense of smell, like your father, who couldn't
endure European cheese. [41] But we have to suffer, to be silent,
to say yes to everything. What are we going to do? The friars own
everything, and if they are unwilling, no one will become a lawyer
or a doctor. Have patience, my son, have patience!"

"But I've had a great deal, mother, I've suffered for months and
months."

Cabesang Andang then resumed her lamentations. She did not ask that he
declare himself a partizan of the friars, she was not one herself--it
was enough to know that for one good friar there were ten bad, who
took the money from the poor and deported the rich. But one must be
silent, suffer, and endure--there was no other course. She cited this
man and that one, who by being _patient_ and humble, even though in
the bottom of his heart he hated his masters, had risen from servant
of the friars to high office; and such another who was rich and
could commit abuses, secure of having patrons who would protect him
from the law, yet who had been nothing more than a poor sacristan,
humble and obedient, and who had married a pretty girl whose son had
the curate for a godfather. So Cabesang Andang continued her litany
of humble and _patient_ Filipinos, as she called them, and was about
to cite others who by not being so had found themselves persecuted
and exiled, when Placido on some trifling pretext left the house to
wander about the streets.

He passed through Sibakong, [42] Tondo, San Nicolas, and Santo Cristo,
absorbed in his ill-humor, without taking note of the sun or the hour,
and only when he began to feel hungry and discovered that he had no
money, having given it all for celebrations and contributions, did
he return to the house. He had expected that he would not meet his
mother there, as she was in the habit, when in Manila, of going out
at that hour to a neighboring house where _panguingui_ was played,
but Cabesang Andang was waiting to propose her plan. She would avail
herself of the procurator of the Augustinians to restore her son to
the good graces of the Dominicans.

Placido stopped her with a gesture. "I'll throw myself into the sea
first," he declared. "I'll become a tulisan before I'll go back to
the University."

Again his mother began her preachment about patience and humility,
so he went away again without having eaten anythi