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Although there was the Ateneo of the Jesuits, where he might study that year, yet it was not very likely that the Dominicans would grant him the transfer, and, even though he should secure it, in the following year he would have to return to the University. "They say that we don't know how to avenge ourselves!" he muttered. "Let the lightning strike and we'll see!"

The Jesuit method of education in their newly established "Ateneo Municipal" was a change from that in the former schools. It treated the Filipino as a Spaniard and made no distinctions between the races in the school dormitory.

Rizal during his last two years in the Ateneo was a boarder. Throughout his entire course he had been the winner of most of the prizes. Upon receiving his Bachelor of Arts diploma he entered the University of Santo Tomás; in the first year he studied the course in philosophy and in the second year began to specialize in medicine.

I am not sentimentalizing about stolid, brazen note-taking, such as that with which the gentlemen of the Ateneo debase their books, because that merely indicates barbarous lack of culture and an obtuseness which is Kabyline.

Besides the interest he took in clay modeling, to which reference has already been made, Rizal was expert in carving. When first in the Ateneo he had carved an image of the Virgin of such grace and beauty that one of the Fathers asked him to try an image of the Sacred Heart. Rizal complied, and produced the carving that played so important a part in his future life.

Señor Gayangos is of opinion that there were other editions of 1605 which have wholly perished; one probably at Barcelona, the press of which city was very active in that year; one at Pamplona, and probably one at Saragossa, which were capitals of old kingdoms. See also Señor Asensio's letter to the Ateneo, No. 23, p. 296; and the Bibliography of Don Quixote at the end of this volume.

Today one can hardly feel that such a career would have been suited to the man or regret that events took the course they did. Poetry was highly esteemed in the Ateneo, and Rizal frequently made essays in verse, often carrying his compositions to Kalamba for his mother's criticisms and suggestions.

The story is told that Rizal was undecided as to his career, and wrote to the rector of the Ateneo for advice; but the Jesuit was then in the interior of Mindanao, and by the time the answer, suggesting that he should devote himself to agriculture, was received, he had already made his choice.

Concerts on the piano and violin, the guitar, and the accordion, alternated with the continual clashing of blades from the fencing lessons. Around a long, wide table the students of the Ateneo prepared their compositions or solved their problems by the side of others writing to their sweethearts on pink perforated note-paper covered with drawings.

Moro!" up the long Strada Nova, with its marble palaces, and newly painted loggias adorned with busts and frescoes, in front of the stately Ateneo with its halls and porticoes for the different schools, which had the reputation of being the finest university in all Italy, and past the rising walls of the new Duomo which Lodovico was building on the site of the ruined basilica of Charlemagne's time.