Part 31

"How you always interrupt me," said M. Lecoq, in his most imperative tones. "Do only what I tell you, and let everything else alone. M. Clameran is not a friend to Prosper. I know that. But he is the friend and protector of Raoul de Lagors. Why? Who can explain the intimacy of these two men of such different ages? We must know this. We must also know who _is_ M. Louis de Clameran--this forge-master who lives in Paris and never goes to his own factories! A jolly dog who has taken it into his head to live at the Hotel du Louvre and who mingles in the whirling crowd, is difficult to watch. Through you, I shall have my eye on him. He has a carriage; you will drive it; and in the easiest way you will know his acquaintances, and be able to give me an account of his slightest proceedings."

"You shall be obeyed, patron."

"Still another word. M. De Clameran is very irritable and suspicious. You will be introduced to him as Joseph Dubois. He will ask for your recommendations. Here are three, showing that you have served the Marquis de Sairmeuse, the Count de Commarin, and your last place--the house of the Baron de Wortschen, who has just gone to Germany. Keep your eyes open, be correct, and watch his movements. Serve well, but without excess of manner. But don't be too cringing, for that would arouse suspicion."

"Make yourself easy, patron: now, where shall I report?"

"I will come to see you every day. Until you have an order, don't step inside of this house: you might be followed. If anything unforeseen occurs, send a dispatch to your wife, and she will advise me. Now go; and be prudent."

The door shut behind Fanferlot, and M. Lecoq passed quickly into his bedroom.

In the twinkling of an eye he stripped off all traces of the official detective chief,--the starched cravat, the gold spectacles, and the wig, which when removed released the thick black hair.

The official Lecoq disappeared; the true Lecoq remained, a person that no one knew,--a handsome young man with brilliant eyes and a resolute manner.

Only a moment was he visible. Seated before a dressing-table, on which were spread a greater array of paints, essences, rouge, cosmetics, and false hair than is required for a modern belle, he began to substitute a new face for the one accorded him by nature.

He worked slowly, handling his little brushes with extreme care, and in about an hour had achieved one of his periodical masterpieces. When he had finished, he was no longer Lecoq: he was the stout gentleman with the red whiskers, not recognized by Fanferlot.

"There," he exclaimed, giving a last glance in the mirror, "I have forgotten nothing; I have left nothing to chance. All my threads are tied, and I can progress. I hope the Squirrel will not lose time."

But Fanferlot was too joyous to squander a moment. He did not run,--he flew along the way toward the Palais de Justice and M. Patrigent the judge.

At last he had the opportunity of demonstrating his own superior perspicacity.

It never occurred to him that he was striving to triumph through the ideas of another man. The greater part of the world is content to strut, like the jackdaw, in peacock's feathers.

The result did not blight his hopes. If M. Patrigent was not altogether convinced, he at least admired the ingenuity of the proceeding.

"This is what I will do," he said in dismissing Fanferlot: "I will present a favorable report to the council chamber, and to-morrow, most likely, the cashier will be released."

Immediately he began to write one of those terrible decisions of "Not Proven," which restores liberty to the accused man, but not honor; which says that he is not guilty, but which does not declare him innocent:--

"Whereas, against the prisoner Prosper Bertomy sufficient charges do not exist, in accordance with Article 128 of the Criminal Code, we declare there are no grounds at present for prosecution against the aforesaid prisoner: we therefore order that he be released from the prison where he is now detained, and set at liberty by the jailer," etc.

When this was finished, M. Patrigent remarked to his registrar Sigault:--"Here is one of those mysterious crimes which baffle justice! This is another file to be added to the archives of the record office." And with his own hand he wrote upon the outside the official number, "_File No. 113_."

Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature.'

BENITO PEREZ GALDOS

(1845-)

BY WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP

I

The contemporary school of Spanish fiction dates from about the revolution of 1868, which drove out Isabel II. and brought in a more liberal form of government. Without this revolution, it would scarcely have found opportunity for the free expression of opinion and the bold critical tone towards ancient institutions which are among its leading characteristics. It is a fresh stirring of the human intellect, a distinctly new product, and a valuable contribution to the world's literature. It has affiliation with the Russian, the English, and other vital modern movements in fiction, and yet it can by no means be confused with that of any other country. Its method is realistic; but one of its leading figures, De Pereda, a strong delineator of rural life, protests, as to him and his works, against the use of the word,--"if," he says vigorously, "it means to rank me under the triumphal French banner of foul-smelling realism." That is to say, they consider the best material for fiction to be the better and sweeter part of life and its higher aspirations, and not that coarse part of it to which the French would seem to have devoted an undue amount of attention. The reader of Anglo-Saxon origin approaches this fiction with ease and sympathy; he has not to acquire any new point of view in order to understand it, nor to unlearn any wonted standards of taste or morals.

An informing Spanish critic, Emilia Pardo Bazan, herself a novelist of talent, points out that the present Spanish school cannot be said to have a "yesterday," but only "a day before yesterday." She means that it has skipped a certain interval, and connects itself with remoter, and not with recent, tradition. It really comes down from a time antedating even the great "Golden Age." It takes its rise in the wonderful naturalness of the 'Celestina,' a quaint "tragi-comedy" of the year 1499. It bears a close relationship, next, to Don Quixote and to the "Novelas Picarescas," the stories of amusing knaves in very low life, of which 'Lazarillo de Tormes' and 'Guzman de Alfarache' are the best examples, and that French imitation, 'Gil Blas,' better than the originals. A period of very stiff Classicism in the eighteenth century, and of extravagant Romanticism in the beginning of the nineteenth, followed, constituting the omitted "yesterday"; and then arrived the vigorous literature of the present time, here in question. The qualities of truth to nature, practical good sense, genuine humor, and play of imagination, have nearly always characterized Spanish fiction, and these qualities seem possessed by the contemporary novelists in a higher degree than ever before. The Picaresque or Rogue stories seem to be--their naturalness admitted--a mere string of disconnected adventures, written to the taste of a period that had not the habit of keeping its attention fixed upon anything long; and we scarcely know any leading character more intimately at the end than at the beginning. As against this, we have now complete and lengthy novels, in which situations and characters are all worked out upon a symmetrical plan, and in which the conclusions generally follow like those of fate; that is to say, they are not arbitrary, but inevitably result from the conditions and circumstances given.

So far as there is English influence in this literature, it may be said to be more in the form of example than as a direct component. It has given the Spanish movement courage and persistence, to see the same ideals elsewhere affording profit and pleasure to millions of men. Otherwise it is a mere coloring, a superficial trace. In particular, Perez Galdos is fond of introducing English characters. Some of them have the Dickens-like trait of a beaming, exuberant benevolence, and the athletic parson in 'Gloria' who risks his life pulling out to the rescue of a wrecked steamer is like Barrie's Little Minister. Many of his leading characters are of that mixed blood, at Cadiz and elsewhere in the South, where one parent is English and the other Spanish, and the offspring have had the advantage of an education in England. He admires English types and ways, and yet with a reluctance too; which brings it about that they are generally introduced subject to considerable satire and mockery. English steadiness and thrift,--yes, very well; but he has a lingering tenderness still for Spanish levity and improvidence. In 'Halma,' all the Marquis de Feramor's children have English names, as "Sandy" (_Alexandrito_), "Frank" (_Paquito_), and "Kitty" (_Catalanita_). The Marquis has been a student at Cambridge, and he imports into his career in Spanish politics the thorough study of the question at issue, the conservative temper and abhorrence of extremes, and the correct "good form" of some finished English statesman. These ideas of English policy and conservatism are talked over again, in the _tertulias_ of the amusing family in 'El Amigo Manso,' who have come back wealthy from Cuba, the head of the household with the purpose of going into Parliament and securing a title. The English and the Spanish literary movements may be said to accompany each other amicably, much as Wellington's red-coats and the Spanish troops marched side by side in the War of Independence, which has left a feeling of friendship between the two nations ever since.

At the head of the school of fiction in question are four writers, namely, Jose Maria de Pereda, Armando Palacio Valdes, Benito Perez Galdos, and Juan Valera. They may be considered, in their various ways, as of well-nigh equal merit; each one has some very distinguished and distinguishing quality, in virtue of which he cannot justly be rated below the others. De Pereda occupies a position apart in devoting himself wholly to the lives of humble people, the mountaineers and fishermen of the Biscayan Provinces. He never willingly departs from these scenes either in his literary or personal excursions; he has his home among them, near Santander. Valera stands apart in a different way, and would occupy himself by preference with the opposite class of society. He is the most learned and scholarly of the quartette, and his writing is the most carefully polished in style. He is a scholarly critic and essayist as well as a novelist. He is a realist like the rest, yet eschews, for instance, the imitation of dialect: he is not a realist in quite the same energetic and conscientious way; his atmosphere, while no doubt equally true, is rather dreamy and poetic. Valdes and Galdos are much more vividly modern, and they treat many of the same kind of subjects, the events of real life such as we see it all around us. Of the four, Valdes has perhaps, in certain passages, the truest tenderness and most delicate pathos, and the most genuine humor, of that sunny kind which allows us to laugh without bitterness. He can sometimes be bitter too, and such a severe social satire as 'Froth' and such books as 'The Grandee' and 'The Origin of Thought' leave, like many of those of Galdos, an impression of gloom; yet even in these we are charmed on the way by his light touch and easy grace of treatment. Galdos is he who takes the gravest attitude; many great problems of life and destiny occupy him seriously; he not only is very earnest, but seems so,--which does not however preclude a plentiful use of humor, as will be seen in the examples given. Furthermore, he is much the most prolific of the distinguished group, and to that extent he may be said to have the widest range.

These writers are a highly beneficent influence in Spain at the present time, spreading over it as they do a multitude of stimulating pictures and liberalizing ideas, cast into charming literary form. They cannot fail to have a considerable effect upon conduct. In its manner, its aversion to obscurity, and fondness for floods of daylight that almost abolish shadow, this fiction is like the Spanish-Roman school of art, the painting of Fortuny, the two Madrazos, and others: the two seem but manifestations of a common impulse. On another side it is to be recommended to foreigners, as affording a body of information about Spain such as the mere traveler could never attain, and which it is useless to look for in fiction depending for its interest upon clever devices of plot and fantastic adventure. It lets an illumination into the heart of what has been the most reserved and mysterious country of Europe. It shows the true Spain, and not merely the conventional one of strumming guitars and jingling mule bells. With all its strangeness, we see it full of that genuine human nature that makes the world akin; and we see, with pleasure and hope, the breaking up of the forces of mediaevalism, the working of a mental and moral turmoil that is preparing the way for a general betterment.

It would not be reasonable to suppose that Spanish literature remained wholly unaffected by the vigorous French movement just across the border. On the contrary, it clearly shows the trace of the robust modern style that has prevailed in France from Balzac to Zola. This trace, however, is in the style and not in the matter. It may possibly have aided the plainness of speech in the Spanish work, which is greater than in English books; and yet this plainness of speech is probably not greater than all books should be allowed, in the interest of their own usefulness, and in order not to be narrow instead of broad pictures of life. The tone towards sexual problems is never flippant; immorality is never put in an attractive light; there is hardly anywhere a more severe homily on the text that "the wages of sin is death" than is found in the wretched career of the transgressors in such books as Galdos's 'Lo Prohibido,' 'Tormento,' and 'La Desheredada.'

Just as in English books, the young girl, her aspirations and her innocent love affairs before marriage, figure largely in these novels. It is not necessary for her to wait until she is married in order to become a suitable heroine for fiction. Religious revolt or dissent, again, is one of the features most often used. There is still a very close union of Church and State in Spain, and life has a very ecclesiastical coloring. Nearly every family has ties of relationship or intimacy with some ecclesiastical person of either sex. This brings it about that such figures are as frequent in books as, correspondingly, in real life. In Valera's 'Pepita Ximenez' we find an earnest young student, a candidate for the priesthood, son of a noble house, turned aside from his holy career--through his father's connivance--by the fascinations of a most charming woman, their neighbor. In Valdes's 'Sister San Sulpicio' it is a young novice, a delightfully gay and bright creature, whom love and matrimony withdraw from her convent. In the same author's 'Marta y Maria' a fair young girl is seen endeavoring to conform in the midst of modern life to the ascetic ideals of the mediaeval saints, even to the point of wearing hair-cloth and beating her tender shoulders with a scourge. Galdos's 'Dona Perfecta' and 'The Family of Leon Roch' combat the undue influence of the confessor, or religious adviser, in the family, and 'Gloria' combats the immemorial bitter prejudice against the Jews. As may be seen, many of these subjects, if approached in a flippant way, might easily lend themselves to grossness and scandal; but such is not the Spanish spirit. The tone towards the Church is severely critical, but not destructive. It is the true secular tone of this century, which holds that a conventional attention to the things of the next world is only due when all demands for benevolence towards living men are satisfied. Howells points out that Galdos attacks only the same intolerant eccelesiastical spirit that elsewhere would be known by another name. These critics would "reform the party from within"; and as they handle with so much skill and consideration the sensibilities of their countrymen who still adhere to the fold, their efforts are the more likely to have a potent effect. It seems a curious anomaly that Pereda, the one of them who is the most modern and stirring in the intellectual way, professes himself the champion of monarchy in its most absolute form.

The beginnings of the present fiction are somewhat feebly found in Antonio de Trueba, and Madame Boehl de Faber, who signed herself "Fernan Caballero,"--one of the first of those who took a man's name, after the fashion of George Sand. These first wrote of other things than the romantic knights and castles, Moors and odalisques, of Scott and Victor Hugo. Fernan Caballero (1797 to 1877), a genial optimist who wrote idealized descriptions of nature, still has a certain vogue. Perez Escrich produced a large number of novels of a humanitarian cast; Fernandez y Gonzalez poured them out, of a cheap order, in a torrent, and became the very type of hasty production. Pedro de Alarcon figures as a kind of link uniting the earlier period to the present, and such a book as his 'El Sombrero de Tres Picos' (The Three-Cornered Hat) is said to be read by some of the present generation with admiration. But it seems to others a trifle, of no great merit, marred by an excessive straining after effect; nothing in it is simply or naturally said. Students of the more realistic side of the movement should read Madame Pardo Bazan's valuable critical study, 'La Cuestion Palpitante' (The Vital Question). Various books by the leading authors named have been well translated into English by Clara Bell, Mrs. Mary J. Serrano, Mary Springer, Rollo Ogden, Nathan Haskell Dole, and others.

II

Benito Perez Galdos was born May 10th, 1845, in the Canary Islands. Las Palmas, his birthplace, capital of the Grand Canary, is a well-built little town of about eighteen thousand people, and the island is the most fertile of the group. In climate and situation the islands belong rather to Africa than Europe. The people are considered descendants of the Gothic inhabitants of Spain, who sought refuge there from the Saracen invasion. Their existence was all but lost to sight for some centuries, and they were only brought under European sway about the time of the discovery of America. These Fortunate Islands, the somewhat unusual scene where Galdos was born and passed his youth, would seem to offer a fresh literary field, yet no word of description or reminiscence concerning them appears in any of his books. This is perhaps part of the policy of reserve that induces him to deny, even by implication, any biographical details concerning himself,--a reserve so marked as to have been generally noted as an eccentricity. Leopoldo Alas, his biographer, in the 'Celebridades Espaniolas Contemporaneas,' assures us that it was only with the greatest difficulty he drew from him the bare admission that he was born in the Canary Islands. He made his studies there in the State college, and came to Madrid at the age of eighteen to study law. He had no great liking for it, and did not follow it further, unless as it became a step for entrance into political life, for he has been a deputy in the National Cortes, for Porto Rico. He did not acquire skill in forensic eloquence; his biographer, above, states that he cannot put four words together in public, nor in private either. A reticent man, he is forced to write in order to find expression.

He wrote his first book in 1867 and '68, but it was not published till 1871. In the mean time the revolution of 1868 took place, which enlarged the boundaries of freedom in literature as in many other directions; and Galdos at Barcelona had some small part in it. The book was 'La Fontana de Oro' (The Fount of Gold). It treats of the aspirations of the "ardent youth" of 1820, who rebelled against the reactionary policy brought in by Ferdinand VII. after the expulsion of the French from the country; and in the student hero Lazaro he perhaps displays his own ideas at the period. Violent political clubs were formed, on the model of the Jacobin Clubs of the French Revolution, and it is from the name of a cafe that was the meeting-place of the most famous of these clubs that the name of the story is derived. His next book was 'El Audaz' (The Fearless: 1872). The period is the same. The hero is an utterly fearless young radical, who has been driven to revolt through wrongs done his family by the Count de Cerezuelo. By a peculiar hazard, though far below her in social station, he meets the daughter of the count, a very proud and disdainful beauty. It is her caprice to fall in love with him, and she remains true to him to the end, when he dies in a street tumult, having first gone mad with his superheated enthusiasm. These early books are conceived upon conventional romantic lines, and hardly gave promise of their author's future fame. They contain however passages of strong character-drawing, like that of the Porrenos, three ancient spinster sisters of a fallen patrician house in 'El Audaz,' which are equal to his later work.