The Social Cancer, by José Rizal - Home

CHAPTER XXXV 170
"After all," added Sister Rufa, "it must not be forgotten that it's a great sin to place your hand on a sacred
person."
"A father's memory is more sacred!" replied Capitana Maria. "No one, not even the Pope himself, much less
Padre Damaso, may profane such a holy memory."
"That's true!" murmured Capitana Tinay, admiring the wisdom of both. "Where did you get such good ideas?"
"But the excommunication and the condemnation?" exclaimed Sister Rufa. "What are honor and a good name
in this life if in the other we are damned? Everything passes away quickly--but the excommunication--to
outrage a minister of Christ! No one less than the Pope can pardon that!"
"God, who commands honor for father and mother, will pardon it, God will not excommunicate him! And I
tell you that if that young man comes to my house I will receive him and talk with him, and if I had a daughter
I would want him for a son-in-law; he who is a good son will be a good husband and a good father--believe it,
Sister Rufa!"
"Well, I don't think so. Say what you like, and even though you may appear to be right, I'll always rather
believe the curate. Before everything else, I'll save my soul. What do you say, Capitana Tinny?"
"Oh, what do you want me to say? You're both right the curate is right, but God must also be right. I don't
know, I'm only a foolish woman. What I'm going to do is to tell my son not to study any more, for they say
that persons who know anything die on the gallows. María Santísima, my son wants to go to Europe!"
"What are you thinking of doing?"
"Tell him to stay with me--why should he know more? Tomorrow or the next day we shall die, the learned
and the ignorant alike must die, and the only question is to live in peace." The good old woman sighed and
raised her eyes toward the sky.
"For my part," said Capitana Maria gravely, "if I were rich like you I would let my sons travel; they are young
and will some day be men. I have only a little while to live, we should see one another in the other life, so
sons should aspire to be more than their fathers, but at our sides we only teach them to be children."
"Ay, what rare thoughts you have!" exclaimed the astonished Capitana Tinay, clasping her hands. "It must be
that you didn't suffer in bearing your twin boys."
"For the very reason that I did bear them with suffering, that I have nurtured and reared them in spite of our
poverty, I do not wish that, after the trouble they're cost me, they be only half-men."
"It seems to me that you don't love your children as God commands," said Sister Rufa in a rather severe tone.
"Pardon me, every mother loves her sons in her own way. One mother loves them for her own sake and
another loves them for their sake. I am one of the latter, for my husband has so taught me."
"All your ideas, Capitana Maria," said Sister Rufa, as if preaching, "are but little religious. Become a sister of
the Holy Rosary or of St. Francis or of St. Rita or of St. Clara."
"Sister Rufa, when I am a worthy sister of men then I'll try to be a sister of the saints," she answered with a
smile.
To put an end to this chapter of comments and that the reader may learn in passing what the simple country