ABSTRACT
One of the most detested instruments of the Spanish supremacy was a body of troops called the Civil Guard, a kind of military police charged with ferreting out disloyalty and the signs of revolt. Domiciliary visits were their specialty, sudden and without warrant; a species of terrorism not then practised anywhere in Europe outside of Russia and Turkey. About the same time the unfortunate Mercado managed to offend another Spaniard still more powerful. For all such visitors to Calamba he kept a kind of gratuitous hotel; hospitality was and is a sacred and inviolable rite among his people. One of the little girls by her grace and beauty particularly won the governor-general's applause. It was a populous household that welcomed her return; she had already borne eleven children to her husband, rearing them with an old-fashioned and sedulous care not yet out of vogue in the Philippines.
