Madrid
Rizal’s medical diploma – Llorente leaves the publication España en Filipinas – The Filipinos at Madrid have not done anything to secure a permit for the importation into the Philippines of Rizal’s Noli me tangere – Lete has not published a review of it.
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Madrid, 19 October 1887
Dear Friend Rizal,
I am always thinking of writing you and I never do it. At last I write you so that you will not think that I have forgotten you.
The medical diploma I suppose is already in your possession. In any case you can claim it from the governor general.
Concerning your books I can only tell you that the authorization from the Ministerio de Fomento [Development][1] has not appeared in the official gazette. Our countrymen have not done anything about it—neither Govantes, nor Leon, nor Regidor, nor anybody. I have withdrawn or separated from the magazine because; 1st, it serves as a footstool for personal ambitions; 2nd, it tries to set fellow countrymen against one another; 3rd, it did not want to do anything for your books; 4th, Lete, having promised to publish a review of your books, has not yet done it.
Having had to be absent from Madrid with my wife for some months I had to leave the negotiation of this question to the countrymen who are in charge of the periodical. They have not done anything. Believe me, envy is eating up our countrymen.
I returned from Lequistio a few days ago and seeing that they have not done anything for your book, I have decided to hold aloof and withdraw completely. The only thing that I regret is the fate of your book and your having entrusted this matter to a person without any influence in the government offices.
I have presented another petition to the Ministerio de Fomento for the publication of the authorization in the Gazette.
We shall divide between us the deposit.
I shall write longer another day.
Ever your friend and comrade,
Julio Llorente
02-273 [Blumentritt V.1]
[1] Ministry of Public Works.