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Updated: May 26, 2025
Capitan Tiago wept all the evening, kissing his daughter's picture and begging her forgiveness, until at last he smoked an enormous quantity of opium. This evening her knell was tolled." "Ah!" exclaimed Simoun, pressing his hands to his head and standing motionless. He remembered to have actually heard the knell while he was pacing about in the vicinity of the nunnery.
But again Simoun shivered; he seemed to see before him the severe countenance of his father, dying in prison, but dying for having done good; then the face of another man, severer still, who had given his life for him because he believed that he was going to bring about the regeneration of his country. "No, I can't turn back," he exclaimed, wiping the perspiration from his forehead.
The priest began to search for a flask, until Simoun cried impatiently, "Useless, it's useless! Don't waste time! I'll go away with my secret!" The bewildered priest fell down at his desk and prayed at the feet of the Christ, hiding his face in his hands.
"The fact is there isn't a single decent lake in this country," interrupted Doña Victorina, highly indignant, and getting ready for a return to the assault upon the citadel. The besieged gazed at one another in terror, but with the promptitude of a general, the jeweler Simoun rushed in to the rescue. "The remedy is very simple," he said in a strange accent, a mixture of English and South American.
Yes, the affair of that afternoon, that affair of the bracelets, had ruined him. Simoun smiled, for when a Chinese merchant complains it is because all is going well, and when he makes a show that things are booming it is quite certain that he is planning an assignment or flight to his own country. "You didn't know that I'm lost, I'm ruined? Ah, Señor Simoun, I'm busted!"
Near the Anda monument he heard Ben-Zayb talking with another person about Simoun, learning that the latter had on the previous night been taken suddenly ill, that he refused to see any one, even the very aides of the General. "Yes!" exclaimed Isagani with a bitter smile, "for him attentions because he is rich. The soldiers return from their expeditions sick and wounded, but no one visits them."
At that moment Simoun came down and, catching sight of the two young men, greeted Basilio in a patronizing tone: "Hello, Don Basilio, you're off for the vacation? Is the gentleman a townsman of yours?" Basilio introduced Isagani with the remark that he was not a townsman, but that their homes were not very far apart. Isagani lived on the seashore of the opposite coast.
How many times have I wished to speak to you young men, to reveal myself and undeceive you! But in view of the reputation I enjoy, my words would have been wrongly interpreted and would perhaps have had a counter effect. How many times have I not longed to approach your Makaraig, your Isagani! Sometimes I thought of their death, I wished to destroy them " Simoun checked himself.
Simoun looked to him like the jinnee of the Arabian Nights that sprang from the sea, he took on gigantic proportions, his head touched the sky, he made the house tremble and shook the whole city with a shrug of his shoulders. The pomegranate assumed the form of a colossal sphere, the fissures became hellish grins whence escaped names and glowing cinders.
"But, Señor Simoun," asked the high official, "what good will you get out of winning promises of virtues, or lives and deportations and summary executions?" "A great deal! I'm tired of hearing virtues talked about and would like to have the whole of them, all there are in the world, tied up in a sack, in order to throw them into the sea, even though I had to use my diamonds for sinkers."
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