Paris
19 June 1889
Dear Friend,
I have received your two letters; I corrected your article and sent it to Barcelona. I could not write you because Llorente arrived here on the 6th of this month and I had to take him everywhere. He does not speak French and he is my childhood friend. He is one of the noblest Filipinos I have known. I said to myself: Friend Blumentritt will pardon me for the sake of another friend.
Your last article against Doña Antonia is marvelously magnificent. I always had a good opinion of you, but never had I thought that you could write Spanish so spiritually, flowingly, and philosophically. “Our genius,” said Heine, “feels out of place in a foreign country,” but yours feels as if you are at home. Also the article Pro Domo is good and strong. The Philippines can and ought to cherish hopes when she can count on such champions of her cause.
Also I have written a prologue for your Defense of the Noli me tángere. I have not sent it to you because I want you to see it already printed. I do not know why the copies have not come out yet. It has been some time ago that I read the last proofs.
I believe I ought to leave Paris now because all the landladies have become crazy on the account of the Exposition. Now they ask more than double. For a tiny room that ordinarily costs 50 francs, now I pay 75 and they ask me yet 120, despite the promise that they will not increase the rent of the room any more. It vexes me very much that here they do no fulfill their word and the laws do not punish this unfulfillment of a promise. For this reason I want to leave Paris. Imagine that I moved three times in three months for the same reason!
Soon I shall send you a new photograph of mine.
Greet for me the family and Dr. Czepelack. I trust that his health has improved.
Yours,
Rizal
03-410 [Reformists]