what to do. Tumult and cannonading
followed. Pablo did not return to his wife for
twenty-one hours; he had given his service
to the Spaniards, and returned safe. He
found his wife upon her knees; she rose to
receive him, but her wits were gone. The
terror she had suffered cost her an illness
that deprived her, for a time, of reason. He
watched over her, and she recovered. A
month afterwards she relapsed, and it soon
appeared that she was subject to monthly
relapses of insanity.

He took her in search of health to the
Tierra Alta, a district much infested by
bandits; but he did not mind bandits. He
had sundry adventures with them, and the
result of them all was that these people
thought Doctor Pablo a fine fellow, and liked
him. With much care, Anna's health was at
last perfectly restored.

Then the young couple, devoted to each
other, returned into Manilla, where, soon
afterwards, Doctor Pablo considered that he
had been insulted by the governor; who had
refused to discharge a soldier on account of
ill-health on his recommendation. Pablo
suddenly resigned every office that he held
under the state, and asked his wife how
she would like to go and live at Iala-Iala?
Anywhere, she replied, with Doctor Pablo.
He bought therefore with his savings, the
peninsula of Iala-Iala; and, although the
governor behaved courteously, refused his
resignation, and appeased his wrath, he held
to his purpose firmly, and set out to inspect
his new theatre of action.

It proved to be a peninsula divided by a
chain of mountains which subsided in a series
of hills towards the lake. It was covered
with forests and thick grassy pasturage, and
was full of game; Doctor Pablo held himself
to be a mighty hunter, great in the chace of
the pheasant or the buffalo. There were no
animals on the domain more noxious than
civet cats and monkeys—men excepted.
The peninsula was a noted haunt of pirates
and bandits. Doctor Pablo went to the cabin
of the person who was pointed out to
him as the most desperate pirate, a fellow
who would do his half-a-dozen murders in
a day, and said to him, "Mabutin-Tajo,"
—that was his name—"you are a great
villain. I am the lord of Iala-Iala, I wish
you to change your mode of life. If you
refuse, I'll punish you. I want a guard, give
me your word of honour that you'll be an
honest man, and I will make you my
lieutenant." The man, after a pause, vowed that
he would be faithful to the death, and
showed the way to the house of another
desperado who would be his serjeant. From
these, and with these, the doctor went to others
of their stamp, raised a little army, and by
evening had in cavalry and infantry, a force
of ten men, which was as large as he
required. He was captain, Mabutin-Tajo
was lieutenant, and the business of the men
was thenceforward not to break order but
to keep it. He got the people of the
place together, caused them to consent to
assemble in a village, marked the line of a
street, planned sites for a church and for
his own mansion, set the people at work, and
masons and master workmen to help them,
from Manilla.

The people of Manilla thought the great
French physician had gone mad, but his
faithful wife heartily entered into his scheme;
and, after eight months of constant passing to
and fro, he at last informed her that her
castle at lala was erected, and conveyed her
to her domain.

Doctor Pablo begged from the governor
the post which we should call in London,
that of Police Magistrate of the Province
of the Lagune. This made him the supreme
judge on his own domain, and secured more
perfectly his influence over the people. From
the Archbishop Hilarion, he begged Father
Miguel de San Francisco as a curate. This
priest was denied to him, as a person with
whom no one could live in peace. Doctor Pablo
persisted and obtained his wish. Father
Miguel came. He was a fiery, energetic man,
a Malay, who got on very well with his new
patron, and was appreciated by his flock:
not the less because he laboured much among
them as a teacher and in other ways, and
preached only once a year, and then it was
always the same sermon—a short one in
two parts—half Spanish for the gentlefolks,
half Tagaloc for the Indians.

In this way, Monsieur Paul de la Gironière
settled at lala. There, he lived many
years. He reformed the natives, taught
them, and humanised them. Without
a cannon-shot, he put an end to piracy.
He cleared woods, and covered the soil
with plantations of indigo and sugar-cane,
rice and coffee. The end of his history was that
he left lala-Iala when its church contained the
graves of his dear wife and of his two infant
children, of a favourite brother who had
quitted France to dwell with him, of his wife's
sister, and of other friends. Doctor Pablo
went back, a lonely man, to his old mother,
in France, in the year eighteen hundred and
thirty-nine, after having passed twenty years
in the Philippines.

{image:pointing finger}NEW TALE by Mr. CHARLES DICKENS now
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