When our still dwelling-place wraps night's dusky mantle about her, Leaving the dead alone with the dead, to watch till the morning, Break not our rest, and seek not to lay death's mystery open. If now and then thou shouldst hear the string of a lute or a zithern, Mine is the hand, dear country, and mine is the voice that is singing.
When my tomb, that all have forgot, no cross nor stone marketh, There let the laborer guide his plough, there cleave the earth open. So shall my ashes at last be one with thy hills and thy valleys. Little 'twill matter then, my country, that thou shouldst forget me! I shall be air in thy streets, and I shall be space in thy meadows. I shall be vibrant speech in thine ears, shall be fragrance and color, Light and shout, and loved song forever repeating my message.
Rizal's own explanation of the lofty purpose of his searching story of his Tagalog fatherland was in these words of his dedicatory preface:
The records of human suffering make known to us the existence of ailments of such nature that the slightest touch irritates and causes tormenting pains. Whenever, in the midst of modern civilizations, I have tried to call up thy dear image, O my country! either for the comradeship of remembrance or to compare thy life with that about me, I have seen thy fair face disfigured and distorted by a hideous social cancer.
Eager for thy health, which is our happiness, and seeking the best remedy for thy pain, I am about to do with thee what the ancients did with their sick: they exposed them on the steps of their temples, that every one who came to adore the divinity within might offer a remedy.
So I shall strive to describe faithfully thy state without extenuation; to lift a corner of the covering that hides thy sore; sacrificing everything to truth, even the love of thy glory, while loving, as thy son, even thy frailties and sins.
It was toward the end of October. Don Santiago de los Santos, better known as Captain Tiago, was giving a dinner; and though, contrary to custom, he had not announced it until that very afternoon, it had become before evening the sole topic of conversation, not only at Binondo, but in the other suburbs of Manila, and even in the city itself. Captain Tiago passed for the most lavish of entertainers, and it was well known that the doors of his home, like those of his country, were closed to nobody and nothing save commerce and all new or audacious ideas. The news spread, therefore, with lightning rapidity in the world of the sycophants, the unemployed and idle, whom heaven has multiplied so generously at Manila.