EL FILIBUSTERISMO

XI. LOS BANOS

CHAPTER XI

LOS BAÑOS

His Excellency, the Captain-General and Governor of the Philippine

Islands, had been hunting in Bosoboso. But as he had to be

accompanied by a band of music,--since such an exalted personage

was not to be esteemed less than the wooden images carried in the

processions,--and as devotion to the divine art of St. Cecilia has

not yet been popularized among the deer and wild boars of Bosoboso,

his Excellency, with the band of music and train of friars, soldiers,

and clerks, had not been able to catch a single rat or a solitary bird.

The provincial authorities foresaw dismissals and transfers, the poor

gobernadorcillos and cabezas de barangay were restless and sleepless,

fearing that the mighty hunter in his wrath might have a notion to make

up with their persons for the lack of submissiveness on the part of the

beasts of the forest, as had been done years before by an alcalde who

had traveled on the shoulders of impressed porters because he found no

horses gentle enough to guarantee his safety. There was not lacking

an evil rumor that his Excellency had decided to take some action,

since in this he saw the first symptoms of a rebellion which should be

strangled in its infancy, that a fruitless hunt hurt the prestige of

the Spanish name, that he already had his eye on a wretch to be dressed

up as a deer, when his Excellency, with clemency that Ben-Zayb lacked

words to extol sufficiently, dispelled all the fears by declaring that

it pained him to sacrifice to his pleasure the beasts of the forest.

But to tell the truth, his Excellency was secretly very well satisfied,

for what would have happened had he missed a shot at a deer, one of

those not familiar with political etiquette? What would the prestige

of the sovereign power have come to then? A Captain-General of the

Philippines missing a shot, like a raw hunter? What would have been

said by the Indians, among whom there were some fair huntsmen? The

integrity of the fatherland would have been endangered.

So it was that his Excellency, with a sheepish smile, and posing as a

disappointed hunter, ordered an immediate return to Los Baños. During

the journey he related with an indifferent air his hunting exploits

in this or that forest of the Peninsula, adopting a tone somewhat

depreciative, as suited the case, toward hunting in Filipinas. The bath

in Dampalit, the hot springs on the shore of the lake, card-games in

the palace, with an occasional excursion to some neighboring waterfall,

or the lake infested with caymans, offered more attractions and fewer