Maria Clara becomes disconsolate and begs her supposed godfather,
Fray Damaso, to put her in a nunnery. Unconscious of her knowledge of
their true relationship, the friar breaks down and confesses that all
the trouble he has stirred up with the Ibarras has been to prevent her
from marrying a native, which would condemn her and her children to
the oppressed and enslaved class. He finally yields to her entreaties
and she enters the nunnery of St. Clara, to which Padre Salvi is soon
assigned in a ministerial capacity.


O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands,
Is this the handiwork you give to God,
This monstrous thing distorted and soul-quenched?
How will you ever straighten up this shape-;
Touch it again with immortality;
Give back the upward looking and the light;
Rebuild in it the music and the dream;
Make right the immemorial infamies,
Perfidious wrongs, immedicable woes?

O masters, lords, and rulers in all lands,
How will the future reckon with this man?
How answer his brute question in that hour
When whirlwinds of rebellion shake the world?
How will it be with kingdoms and with kings--
With those who shaped him to the thing he is--
When this dumb terror shall reply to God,
After the silence of the centuries?