Christmas Eve Reunion and Final Sacrifice — Noli Me Tángere

High on a mountain slope Basilio, still lame after two moons with hunters, asks to go down on Christmas Eve and give his mother the gift of a living son. The grandfather blesses him with dried meat and a granddaughter as guide. The children promise firecrackers he will not see. Below, San Diego shivers under a north wind with no lanterns. Capitan Basilio and Don Filipo talk of burned books, Tasio buried in the Chinese cemetery, and a physician who drove Sisa out for fear of Ibarra's name. Iday asks when Maria Clara will marry. Sinang will not open her letter.

Basilio finds his house in ruins, hears that his mother is mad and Crispin vanished, and follows Sisa's song until a woman stones him for chasing a madwoman. She flees the barracks. He runs bleeding into the Ibarra wood. At the balete tomb she bars the gate with her body until he climbs the tree and falls into her arms. Recognition lights her ruined mind for one moment. Then the embrace stills. Her heart stops. He has no coin for a grave, and he knows the curate would not allow one.

A wounded stranger stands over him: two days without food or sleep, already dying. He asks whether anyone else has come tonight. He orders a pyre for both bodies twenty paces beyond the brook, gold buried nearby, and school for the boy. He turns to the east and asks whoever will see dawn to welcome it and not forget those who fell during the night. Then he sinks. Sister Rufa sees the smoke at mass-time and curses a heretic clearing on a holy day. The epilogue scatters the rest: Damaso found dead after a transfer order, Tiago yellow in an opium shop, Linares in Paco, the alferez home a major. On a September night two patrolmen see a white figure on the nunnery roof with her face raised to a deaf sky. The next day a man from the authorities will not take her out. The abbess calls her mad. General J---- asks for her later, and no maiden appears.