diced b Jos e S. Arc a, - non

18. Rizal to Blumentritt, aboard the "Melbourne," 22 October 1891;EJR, 11-2, 774-775; ER, V, 621-622.19. This trip to Hongkong is hardly mentioned by Rizal's biographers,except Austin Coates, Rizal. Philippine Nationalist and Martyr (Hongkong,1968), 209-211. But he singles out the Borneo episode and amplifies thereference in the diary to the Pryer marriage. Gregorio Zaide, Jose Rizal. Life,Works, and Writings (Manila, 1957), 161-162, dedicates an epigraph to thisjourney in chapter IX, where Rizal's friar co-passengers are mentioned, butnot expressly the Bishop. Rafael Palma, Biografia de Rizal (Manila, 1949)gives more details of this journey, using the information in the diary. This isthe only work where a more lengthy discussion of Volonteri is included basedon Rizal's impressions and notes. But Palma is wrong when he says in thealphabetical index that Volonteri was bishop of Tonkin. He was bishop onlyof Honan, China.20. EJR, I, 240-241.21. EJR, I, 241.22. In 1891, Nelly wrote to Rizal: "When [my parents] wanted to knowhow I felt about you, I answered I could not tell them without first knowing ifyou have decided to embrace. Christianity such and as I understand it": EJR,11-4, 156. Palma believes the condition was for Rizal to become an OrthodoxChristian: Biografia, 180. Coates affirms "Nelly was a Protestant": Rizal,196. Both authors show how they came to this conclucion.23. While in exile in Dapitan, Rizal and Fr. Pablo Pastells, S. J. can iedon by letter a brief exchange of views on faith. In one of these letters, theJesuit told his friend the "Protestants have taken hold of you." In reply Rizalwrote back: "As for becoming a Protestant .. . If Your Reverence knew whatI had lost for not openly agreeing with Protestant ideas, you would say nosuch thing. Had I not always respected the religious phenomenon, had I, formy part, taken religion as a science of convenience and an art by which to livewell, instead of now finding myself a poor exile, I would now be rich, free.Honors would now have been heaped on me. Rizal a Protestant! A loudguffaw explodes inside me which only my respect for your words can check.. . . You should have listened to my conservations with a Protestant pastor,during the long summer evenings there in the solitude of Ondenwald. There,talking quietly and objectively, expressing freely one's thoughts, wediscussed our respective beliefs, the moral code of nations, its influence on257