diced b Jos e S. Arc a, - non

15 November, in Saigon: "All [the missionaries] tell me about the Anamiteseminarians and the missionaries with admiration. They are angels, a poorFranciscan was saying."32Jose Rizal's arrival in Manila, after several months' stay in Hongkong,now the key figure of the present and the future of the Philippines, wouldproduce a storm of contrary forces, and our writer and statesman, aware of hisresponsibility, in order not to disturb feelings and forestall misunderstandingsabout himself, accepted the exile to Dapitan and voluntarily imposedabsolute silence on himself, interrupted only by letters to intimate friends andscientists.On 4 October 1896, he was once again on board ship, the "Castilla,"anchored off Barcelona. From the Philippines he had sailed to Spain in orderto continue on to Cuba to offer his medical services as a volunteer in theSpanish army. He awaited instructions, and meanwhile, he wrote in his diaryof the trip: "At six o'clock many cannon shots awaken us; I think this isbecause of the feast of Saint Francis of Assisi, as they say."" A few pagesmore, and he ends his diary.Before putting a period to this section on the irresistible attractiontowards certain Franciscan values which struggled to open a path into Rizal'sheart, it is good to make a final observation that can serve to complementwhat has been discussed so far. Rizal scholars are aware of the hero's artisticsense and the by no means negligible talents he has shown for the plastic andgraphic arts. If it is true that the artist chooses as an inspiring object any andevery thing that he finds specially attractive and beautiful, then the presenceof Franciscan motifs in the artistry of Rizal is one more proof that what isFranciscan formed an important aspect of his personality. Naturally afterwhat we have been discussing in the previous pages, this cannot surprise us.Now, from the first epoch of his artistic career, his youth, we know a claymodel of Saint Anthony Padua, the saint, together with Saint Paul, as far aswe know, modelled by Rizal. To him we owe also a clay carving of a Friar, ofwhich I have not seen a reproduction.34III. CLUES TO SOLVE AN ENIGMAWhat has been discussed so far seems to prove the existence of a doubleposture towards the Franciscans in Jose Rizal's writings: one of revulsion,condemnation and disdain in his works of fiction, and the other of attraction,131