ABSTRACT
The fire of discontent was rising among the people of the Philippines; the letters of Jose Rizal's friends foreshadowed an explosion. Not revolution by peaceful means was at hand but another civil war. Rizal determined to go to Madrid that he might talk with the Filipinos there about these storm-signals and lodge with the Spanish Government a formal protest against the eviction of the family from its Calamba property. The first impression one had of him was of wholesome vigor and physical well-being. He was of rather slender build, but all of muscle and sinew compact, for he never remitted his exercises. He seems never to have thought that the violence he contemplated was nothing but a minute specimen of the war-making he denounced, nor that in sending challenges he reverted from his most cherished doctrines. There remains to be noted a singular fact about that leadership of his people, and not of his designing or plotting.
