He terminated the article with this farewell:  “Go in peace, gallant warrior, you who with expert hand have guided the destinies of this country in such calamitous times!  Go in peace to breathe the balmy breezes of Manzanares! [73] We shall remain here like faithful sentinels to venerate your memory, to admire your wise dispositions, to avenge the infamous attempt upon your splendid gift, which we will recover even if we have to dry up the seas!  Such a precious relic will be for this country an eternal monument to your splendor, your presence of mind, your gallantry!”

In this rather confused way he concluded the article and before dawn sent it to the printing-office, of course with the censor’s permit.  Then he went to sleep like Napoleon, after he had arranged the plan for the battle of Jena.

But at dawn he was awakened to have the sheets of copy returned with a note from the editor saying that his Excellency had positively and severely forbidden any mention of the affair, and had further ordered the denial of any versions and comments that might get abroad, discrediting them as exaggerated rumors.

To Ben-Zayb this blow was the murder of a beautiful and sturdy child, born and nurtured with such great pain and fatigue.  Where now hurl the Catilinarian pride, the splendid exhibition of warlike crime-avenging materials?  And to think that within a month or two he was going to leave the Philippines, and the article could not be published in Spain, since how could he say those things about the criminals of Madrid, where other ideas prevailed, where extenuating circumstances were sought, where facts were weighed, where there were juries, and so on?  Articles such as his were like certain poisonous rums that are manufactured in Europe, good enough to be sold among the negroes, good for negroes, [74] with the difference that if the negroes did not drink them they would not be destroyed, while Ben-Zayb’s articles, whether the Filipinos read them or not, had their effect.

“If only some other crime might be committed today or tomorrow,” he mused.

With the thought of that child dead before seeing the light, those frozen buds, and feeling his eyes fill with tears, he dressed himself to call upon the editor.  But the editor shrugged his shoulders; his Excellency had forbidden it because if it should be divulged that seven of the greater gods had let themselves be surprised and robbed by a nobody, while they brandished knives and forks, that would endanger the integrity of the fatherland!  So he had ordered that no search be made for the lamp or the thief, and had recommended to his successors that they should not run the risk of dining in any private house, without being surrounded by halberdiers and guards.  As those who knew anything about the events that night in Don Timoteo’s house were for the most part military officials and government employees, it was not difficult to suppress the affair in public, for it concerned the integrity of the fatherland.  Before this name Ben-Zayb bowed his head heroically, thinking about Abraham, Guzman El Bueno, [75] or at least, Brutus and other heroes of antiquity.