The friar orders were, however, all-powerful, not only in the
Philippines, but also in Madrid, where they were not chary of making
use of a part of their wealth to maintain their influence. The
efforts of the Filipinos in Spain, while closely watched, do not
seem to have been given any very serious attention, for the Spanish
authorities no doubt realized that as long as the young men stayed
in Madrid writing manifestoes in a language which less than one
per cent of their countrymen could read and spending their money
on members of the Cortes, there could be little danger of trouble
in the Philippines. Moreover, the Spanish ministers themselves
appear to have been in sympathy with the more moderate wishes of
the Filipinos, a fact indicated by the number of changes ordered
from time to time in the Philippine administration, but they were
powerless before the strength and local influence of the religious
orders. So matters dragged their weary way along until there was an
unexpected and startling development, a David-Goliath contest, and
certainly no one but a genius could have polished the "smooth stone"
that was to smite the giant.

It is said that the idea of writing a novel depicting conditions in
his native land first came to Rizal from a perusal of Eugene Sue's The
Wandering Jew, while he was a student in Madrid, although the model
for the greater part of it is plainly the delectable sketches in Don
Quixote, for the author himself possessed in a remarkable degree that
Cervantic touch which raises the commonplace, even the mean, into
the highest regions of art. Not, however, until he had spent some
time in Paris continuing his medical studies, and later in Germany,
did anything definite result. But in 1887 Noli Me Tangere was printed
in Berlin, in an establishment where the author is said to have worked