The Reign of Greed | Page 2

clandestinely administered by a girl friend.
Ibarra succeeds in having the excommunication removed, but before he
can explain matters an uprising against the Civil Guard is secretly
brought about through agents of Padre Salvi, and the leadership is
ascribed to Ibarra to ruin him. He is warned by a mysterious friend, an
outlaw called Elias, whose life he had accidentally saved; but desiring
first to see Maria Clara, he refuses to make his escape, and when the
outbreak occurs he is arrested as the instigator of it and thrown into
prison in Manila.
On the evening when Capitan Tiago gives a ball in his Manila house to
celebrate his supposed daughter's engagement, Ibarra makes his escape
from prison and succeeds in seeing Maria Clara alone. He begins to
reproach her because it is a letter written to her before he went to
Europe which forms the basis of the charge against him, but she clears
herself of treachery to him. The letter had been secured from her by
false representations and in exchange for two others written by her

mother just before her birth, which prove that Padre Damaso is her real
father. These letters had been accidentally discovered in the convento
by Padre Salvi, who made use of them to intimidate the girl and get
possession of Ibarra's letter, from which he forged others to incriminate
the young man. She tells him that she will marry the young Spaniard,
sacrificing herself thus to save her mother's name and Capitan Tiago's
honor and to prevent a public scandal, but that she will always remain
true to him.
Ibarra's escape had been effected by Elias, who conveys him in a banka
up the Pasig to the Lake, where they are so closely beset by the Civil
Guard that Elias leaps into the water and draws the pursuers away from
the boat, in which Ibarra lies concealed.
On Christmas Eve, at the tomb of the Ibarras in a gloomy wood, Elias
appears, wounded and dying, to find there a boy named Basilio beside
the corpse of his mother, a poor woman who had been driven to
insanity by her husband's neglect and abuses on the part of the Civil
Guard, her younger son having disappeared some time before in the
convento, where he was a sacristan. Basilio, who is ignorant of Elias's
identity, helps him to build a funeral pyre, on which his corpse and the
madwoman's are to be burned.
Upon learning of the reported death of Ibarra in the chase on the Lake,
Maria Clara becomes disconsolate and begs her supposed godfather,
Fray Damaso, to put her in a nunnery. Unconscious of her knowledge
of their true relationship, the friar breaks down and confesses that all
the trouble he has stirred up with the Ibarras has been to prevent her
from marrying a native, which would condemn her and her children to
the oppressed and enslaved class. He finally yields to her entreaties and
she enters the nunnery of St. Clara, to which Padre Salvi is soon
assigned in a ministerial capacity.

O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands, Is this the handiwork you give
to God, This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched? How will
you ever straighten up this shape-; Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light; Rebuild in it the music and
the dream; Make right the immemorial infamies, Perfidious wrongs,
immedicable woes?
O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands, How will the future reckon

with this man? How answer his brute question in that hour When
whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world? How will it be with kingdoms
and with kings-- With those who shaped him to the thing he is-- When
this dumb terror shall reply to God, After the silence of the centuries?
Edwin Markham

Contents
I. On the Upper Deck II. On the Lower Deck III. Legends IV. Cabesang
Tales V. A Cochero's Christmas Eve VI. Basilio VII. Simoun VIII.
Merry Christmas IX. Pilates X. Wealth and Want XI. Los Baños XII.
Placido Penitente XIII. The Class in Physics XIV. In the House of the
Students XV. Señor Pasta XVI. The Tribulations of a Chinese XVII.
The Quiapo Pair XVIII. Legerdemain XIX. The Fuse XX. The Arbiter
XXI. Manila Types XXII. The Performance XXIII. A Corpse XXIV.
Dreams XXV. Smiles and Tears XXVI. Pasquinades XXVII. The Friar
and the Filipino XXVIII. Tatakut XXIX. Exit Capitan Tiago XXX. Juli
XXXI. The High Official XXXII. Effect of the Pasquinades XXXIII.
La Ultima Razón XXXIV. The Wedding XXXV. The Fiesta XXXVI.
Ben-Zayb's Afflictions XXXVII. The Mystery XXXVIII. Fatality
XXXIX. Conclusion

CHAPTER I
On the Upper Deck
Sic itur ad astra.
One morning in December the steamer Tabo was laboriously ascending
the tortuous course of the Pasig, carrying a