is companion, Soledad Villafranca, received the following
letter:

"No reason to worry; you know I am absolutely innocent. Today I am
particularly hopeful and joyous. It is the first time I can write to
you, and the first time since my arrest that I can bathe in the rays
of the sun, streaming generously through my cell window. You, too,
must be joyous."

How pathetic that Ferrer should have believed, as late as October
fourth, that he would not be condemned to death. Even more pathetic
that his friends and comrades should once more have made the blunder
in crediting the enemy with a sense of justice. Time and again they
had placed faith in the judicial powers, only to see their brothers
killed before their very eyes. They made no preparation to rescue
Ferrer, not even a protest of any extent; nothing. "Why, it is
impossible to condemn Ferrer; he is innocent." But everything is
possible with the Catholic Church. Is she not a practiced henchman,
whose trials of her enemies are the worst mockery of justice?

On October fourth Ferrer sent the following letter to L'HUMANITE:

The Prison Cell, Oct. 4, 1909.

My dear Friends--Notwithstanding most absolute innocence, the
prosecutor demands the death penalty, based on denunciations of
the police, representing me as the chief of the world's
Anarchists, directing the labor syndicates of France, and guilty
of conspiracies and insurrections everywhere, and declaring that
my voyages to London and Paris were undertaken with no other
object.

With such infamous lies they are trying to kill me.

The messenger is about to depart and I have not time for more.
All the evidence presented to the investigating judge by the
police is nothing but a tissue of lies and calumnious
insinuations. But no proofs against me, having done nothing at
all.

FERRER.

October thirteenth, 1909, Ferrer's heart, so brave, so staunch, so
loyal, was stilled. Poor fools! The last agonized throb of that
heart had barely died away when it began to beat a hundredfold in the
hearts of the civilized world, until it grew into terrific thunder,
hurling forth its malediction upon the instigators of the black
crime. Murderers of black garb and pious mien, to the bar of
justice!

Did Francisco Ferrer participate in the anti-military uprising?