Read "Friars and Filipinos" by Jose Rizal online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The festival was over. The citizens found, just as every year, that their treasury was poorer, that they had worked, perspired, and stayed up nights without enjoying themselves, without acquiring new friends, and in a word, had paid dearly for the noise and their headaches. But it did not matter. The next year they would do the same thing, and the same for the coming century, just as had always been the custom to the present time.
Enough sadness reigned in Captain Tiago's house. All the windows were closed; the people scarcely made a noise, and no one dared to speak except in the kitchen. Maria Clara, the soul of the house, lay sick in her bed.