(1835-1873)
o speak of the detective novel is to speak of Gaboriau. He cannot be called the father of it; but the French novelist made his field so peculiarly his own, developed its type of human nature so painstakingly, created so distinctive a reputation associated with it, that it is doubtful whether any one can be said to have outrivaled him.
Born at Saujon, in the Department of the Charente-Inférieure, in 1835, Gaboriau drifted from school into the cavalry service; then into three or four less picturesque methods of keeping body and soul together; and finally, by a kind of literary accident, he became the private secretary of the Parisian novelist Paul Féval. His first successful story ran as a continued one in a journal called Le Pays. It was 'The Lerouge Affair,' but it did not even under newspaper circumstances find any considerable favor until it caught the eye of the astute Millaud, the founder of the Petit Journal. Millaud recognized in the fiction a new note in detective-novel making. He transferred it to another journal, Le Soleil. There it made an instant and tremendous success.
From that moment Gaboriau's career was determined and fortunate. In rapid succession followed 'The Crime of Oreival' (1867); 'File No. 113' (1867); the elaborate 'Slaves of Paris' (1869); 'M. Lecoq' (1869),—in which title appears the name of the moving spirit of almost all the other stories; 'The Infernal Life' (1870); and four or five others. All these stories have been translated into almost every modern language that has a reading public. They brought Gaboriau a large income during his lifetime, and they are still valuable literary properties. Their author died in Paris, his health broken in consequence of incessant overwork, in September 1873.
Gaboriau elevated the detective story to something like a superior plane in popular fiction. It is a question whether he did not say in a large measure the strongest word in it, and to all intents and purposes the last word. His books all have a certain resemblance, in that we start into a complex drama with a riddle of crime. The unfolding always brings us sooner or later to a dramatic family secret, of which the original crime has only been an outside detail. The secret is the mainspring of the book, and about the middle of it the reader finds himself chiefly absorbed by it. Indeed, Gaboriau's novels have often been spoken of as "told backward." Most of the novels too gain their movement from one source—the wonderful shrewdness and audacity of a certain M. Lecoq of the Paris detective service. M. Lecoq was really an exaggeration of the well-known and wonderfully able Paris detective, M. Vidocq; and there are dozens of episodes in the course of Vidocq's brilliant professional career which Gaboriau did not dress up so very much in introducing them into his stories. There is an individuality to each novel, in spite of the family likeness. Occasionally, like Dickens, the author attacked abuses with effect; as in 'The Infernal Life' and 'The Slaves of Paris' and other books where he has set forth the merciless system of private blackmailing in Paris with little exaggeration.
As to literary manner, Gaboriau was not a writer of the first order, even as a French popular novelist. But he knew how to write; and there is a correctness of diction and a nervous vivacity that is much to his credit, considering the rapidity with which he produced his work, and the fact that he had no sufficient early training for his profession. He is seldom slipshod, and he is never really negligent. He has been criticized for making his denouements too simple, if one regards them as a whole process; but his details are full of variety, and the reader of Gaboriau never is troubled to keep his attention on the author's pages, even in the case of those stories that are not of the first class among his works. Perhaps the best of all the novels is one of the shorter ones, 'File No. 113.'
THE IMPOSTOR AND THE BANKER'S WIFE: THE ROBBERY
From 'File No. 113'
Raoul Spencer, supposed to be Raoul de Clameran, began to triumph over his instincts of revolt. He ran to the door and rang the bell. It opened.
"Is my aunt at home?" he asked the footman.
"Madame is alone in the boudoir next her room," replied the servant.
Raoul ascended.
Clameran had said to Raoul, "Above all, be careful about your entrance; your appearance must express everything, and thus you will avoid impossible explanations."
When Raoul entered the little reception-room, his pale face and wild eyes frightened Madame Fauvel, who cried:—
"Raoul! What has happened to you?"
The sound of her gentle voice produced upon the young vagrant the effect of an electric shock. He trembled from head to foot: yet his mind was clear; Louis had not been mistaken in him. Raoul continued his role as if on the stage, and as assurance came to him his knavery crushed his better nature.
"Mother, the misfortune which has come to me," he replied, "is the last one."
Madame Fauvel had never seen him like this. Trembling with emotion, she rose and stood before him, with her tender face near his. She fixed in a steady gaze the power of her will, as if she meant to read the depths of his soul.
"What is it?" she insisted. "Raoul, my son, tell me."
He pushed her gently away.
"What has happened," he replied in a choked voice which pierced the heart of Madame Fauvel, "proves that I am unworthy of you, unworthy of my noble and generous father."
She moved her head in protestation.
"Ah!" he continued, "I know and judge myself. No one could reproach my own infamous conduct so cruelly as my own conscience. I was not born wicked, but I am a miserable fool. I have hours when, as if in a vertigo, I do not know what I am doing. Ah! I should not have been like this, mother, if you had been with me in my childhood. But brought up among strangers, and left to myself without any guides but my own instincts, I am at the mercy of my own passions. Possessing nothing, not even my stolen name, I am vain and devoured by ambition. Poor and without resources but your help, I have the tastes and vices of a millionaire's son. Alas! when I recovered you, the harm was done. Your affection, your maternal tenderness which have given me my only days of happiness, could not save me. I who have suffered so much, who have endured so many privations, who have known hunger, have been spoiled by this new luxury with which you have surrounded me. I threw myself into pleasure as a drunkard rushes for the strong drink of which he has been deprived."
Raoul expressed himself with such intense conviction and assurance that Madame Fauvel did not interrupt.
Mute and terrified, she dared not question him, fearful of learning some horrible news.
He however continued:—"Yes, I have been a fool. Happiness has passed by me, and I did not know enough to stretch out my hand to take it. I have rejected an exquisite reality for the pursuit of a phantom. I, who should have spent my life by your side and sought constantly for new proofs of my love and gratitude, I, a dark shadow, give you a cruel stab, cause you sorrow, and render you the most unfortunate of beings. Ah! what a brute I have been! For the sake of a creature whom I should despise, I have thrown to the wind a fortune whose every piece of gold has cost you a tear! With you lies happiness. I know it too late."
He stopped, overcome by the thought of his evil conduct, ready to burst into tears.
"It is never too late to repent, my son," murmured Madame Fauvel, "and redeem your wrong."
"Ah, if I could!" cried Raoul; "but no, it is too late. Who knows how long my good resolutions will last? It is not only to-day that I have condemned myself without pity. Seized by remorse at each new failure, I have sworn to regain my self-respect. Alas! to what has my periodical repentance amounted? At the first new temptation I forget my remorse and my oaths. You consider me a man: I am only an unstable child. I am weak and cowardly, and you are not strong enough to dominate my weakness and control my vacillating character. I have the best intentions in the world, yet my actions are those of a scoundrel. The gap between my position and my nature is too wide for me to reconcile them. Who knows where my deplorable character may lead me?"
He gave a gesture expressing recklessness, and added, "I myself will bring justice upon myself."
Madame Fauvel was too deeply agitated to follow Raoul's sudden moods.
"Speak!" she cried; "explain yourself. Am I not your mother? You must tell me the truth; I must hear all."
He appeared to hesitate, as if he feared to give so terrible a shock to his mother. Finally, in a hollow voice he said, "I am ruined!"
"Ruined!"
"Yes, and I have nothing more to wait for nor to hope for. I am dishonored, and through my own fault, my own grievous fault!"
"It is true. But fear not, mother; I will not drag the name that you bestowed upon me in the dirt. I have the vulgar courage not to survive my dishonor. Go, waste no sympathy on me. I am one of those creatures of destiny who have no refuge save death. I am the victim of fate. Have you not been forced to deny my birth? Did not the memory of me haunt you and deprive your nights of sleep? And now, having found you, in exchange for your devotion I bring into your life a bitter curse."
"Ungrateful child! Have I ever reproached you?"
"Never. And therefore with your blessing, and with your loved name on his lips, your Raoul will—die!"
"Die? You?"
"Yes, mother: honor bids it. I am condemned by inexorable judges—my will and my conscience."
An hour earlier Madame Fauvel would have sworn that Raoul had made her suffer all that a woman could endure; and now he had brought her a new grief so acute that the former ones seemed naught in comparison.
"What have you done?" she stammered.
"Money was intrusted to me. I played, and lost it."
"Was it a large amount?"
"No, but neither you nor I can replace it. Poor mother, have I not taken everything from you? Haven't you given me your last jewel?"
"But M. De Clameran is rich; he has put his fortune at my disposal. I will order the carriage and go to him."
"M. De Clameran, mother, is absent for eight days; and I must have the money to-night, or I am lost. Go! I have thought of everything before deciding. But one loves life at twenty!"
He drew a pistol half out of his pocket, saying with a grim smile, "This will arrange everything."
Madame Fauvel was too unnerved in reflecting upon the horror of the conduct of the supposed Raoul de Clameran to fancy that this last wild menace was but a means for obtaining money.
Forgetting the past, ignoring the future, and concentrating her thought on the present situation, she saw but one thing—that her son was about to kill himself, and that she was powerless to arrest his suicide.
"Wait, wait," she said; "André will soon return, and I will tell him that I have need of—How much did you lose?"
"Thirty thousand francs."
"You shall have them to-morrow."
"I must have them to-night."
She seemed to be going mad; she wrung her hands in despair.
"To-night!" she said: "why didn't you come sooner? Do you lack confidence in me? To-night there is no one to open the safe—without that—"
The expectant Raoul caught the word. He gave an exclamation of joy, as if a light had broken upon his dark despair.
"The safe!" he cried; "do you know where the key is?"
"Yes, it is here."
"Thank heaven!"
He looked at Madame Fauvel with such a demoniacal glance that she dropped her eyes.
"Give it to me, mother," he entreated.
"Miserable boy!"
"It is life that I ask of you."
This prayer decided her. Taking a candle, she stepped quickly into her room, opened the writing-desk, and there found M. Fauvel's own key.
But as she was handing it to Raoul, reason returned.
"No," she murmured; "no, it is impossible."
He did not insist, and indeed seemed willing to retire.
"Ah, well!" he said. "Then, my mother, one last kiss."
She stopped him:—"What will you do with the key, Raoul? Have you also the secret word?"
"No, but I can try."
"You know there is never money in the safe."
"Let us try. If I open it by a miracle, and if there is money in the box, then I shall believe that God has taken pity upon us."
"And if you do not succeed? Then will you swear that you will wait until to-morrow?"
"Upon the memory of my father, I swear it."
"Then here is the key! Come." ...
They had now reached Prosper's office, and Raoul had placed the lamp on a high shelf, from which point it lighted the entire room. He had recovered all of his self-possession, or rather that peculiar mechanical precision of action which seems to be independent of the will, and which men accustomed to peril always find at their service in times of pressing need. Rapidly, and with the dexterity of experience, he placed the five buttons of the iron box upon the letters forming the name g,y,p,s,y. His expression during this short performance was one of intense anxiety. He began to fear that the excited energy which he had summoned might fail him, and also that if he did open the box he might not find the hoped-for sum. Prosper might have changed the letters, and he might have been sent to the bank that day.
Madame Fauvel watched Raoul with pathetic distress. She read in his wild eyes that despair of the unfortunate, who so passionately desire a result that they fancy their unassisted will can overcome all obstacles.
Being intimate with Prosper, and having frequently watched him close the office, Raoul knew perfectly well—indeed, he had made it a study and attempted it himself, for he was a far-seeing youth—how to manipulate the key in the lock.
He inserted it gently, turned it, pushed it in deeper, and turned it again, then he pushed it in with a violent shock and turned it once more. His heart beat so loudly that Madame Fauvel could hear it.
The word had not been changed: the box opened.
Raoul and his mother uttered cries—hers of terror, his of triumph.
"Shut it!" screamed Madame Fauvel, frightened at this inexplicable and incomprehensible result; "leave it—come!"
And half mad, she threw herself upon Raoul, clinging to his arm in desperation and drawing him to her with such violence that the key was dragged from the lock and along the door of the coffer, leaving a long and deep mark.
But Raoul had had time to notice upon the upper shelf of the box three bundles of bank-notes. These he quickly snatched with his left hand, slipped them under his coat and placed them between his waistcoat and shirt.
Exhausted by her efforts, and yielding to the violence of her emotions, Madame Fauvel dropped Raoul's arm, and to avoid falling, supported herself on the back of Prosper's arm-chair.
"I implore you, Raoul," she said, "I beseech you to put those bank-notes back in the box. I shall have money to-morrow, I swear it to you a hundred times over, and I will give it to you, my son. I beg you to take pity on your mother!"
He paid no attention to her. He was examining the long scratch on the door. This mark of the theft was very convincing and disturbing.
"At least," implored Madame Fauvel, "don't take all. Keep what you need to save yourself, and leave the rest."
"What for? Would a balance make discovery less easy?"
"Yes, because I—you see I can manage it. Let me arrange it! I can find an explanation! I will tell André that I needed money—"
With precaution, Raoul closed the safe.
"Come," he said to his mother, "let us leave, so that we may not be suspected. One of the servants might go to the drawing-room and be surprised not to find us there."
His cruel indifference and cold calculation at such a moment filled Madame Fauvel with indignation. Yet she still hoped that she might influence her son. She still believed in the power of her entreaties and tears.
"Ah me!" she said, "it might be as well! If they discover us, I care little or nothing. We are lost! André will drive me from the house, a miserable creature. But at least, I will not sacrifice the innocent. To-morrow Prosper will be accused. Clameran has taken from him the woman he loves, and you, now you will rob him of his honor. I will not."
She spoke so loud and with such a penetrating voice that Raoul was alarmed. He knew that the office clerk slept in an adjoining room. Although it was not late, he might have gone to bed; and if so, he could hear every word.
"Let us go," he said, seizing Madame Fauvel by the arm.
But she resisted, and clung to a table, the better to resist.
"I have been a coward to sacrifice Madeleine," she said quietly. "I will not sacrifice Prosper!"
Raoul knew of a victorious argument which would break Madame Fauvel's resolution.
"Ah!" he cried with a cynical laugh; "you do not know, then, that Prosper and I are in league, and that he shares my fate."
"That is impossible."
"What do you think? Do you imagine that it was chance which gave me the secret word and opened the box?"
"Prosper is honest."
"Of course, and so am I. But—we need the money."
"No, dear mother. Madeleine left Prosper, and—well, bless me! he has tried to console himself, the poor fellow; and such consolations are expensive."
He had lifted the lamp; and gently but with much force pushed Madame Fauvel towards the staircase.
She seemed to be more dumbfounded than when she saw the open safe.
"What," she said, "Prosper a thief?"
She asked herself if she were not the victim of a terrible nightmare; if an awakening would not rid her of this unspeakable torture. She could not control her thoughts, and mechanically, supported by Raoul, she placed her foot on the narrow stairs.
"The key must be returned to the writing-desk," said Raoul, when they reached the bedroom.
She appeared not to hear, and it was Raoul who replaced the key in the box from which he had seen her take it.
He then led or rather carried Madame Fauvel to the little drawing-room where he had found her upon his arrival, and placed her in an easy-chair. The utter prostration of this unhappy woman, her fixed eyes, and her loss of expression, revealed only too well the agony of her mind. Raoul, frightened, asked if she had gone mad?
"Come, mother dear," he said, as he tried to warm her icy hands, "come to yourself. You have saved my life, and we have both rendered a great service to Prosper. Fear nothing: all will come straight. Prosper will be accused, perhaps arrested. He expects that; but he will deny it, and as his guilt cannot be proved, he will be released."
But his lies and his efforts were lost upon Madame Fauvel, who was too distracted to hear them.
"Raoul," she murmured, "my son, you have killed me!"
Her voice was so impressive in its sorrow, her tone was so tender in its despair, that Raoul was affected, and even decided to restore the stolen money. But the thought of Clameran returned.
Then, noticing that Madame Fauvel remained in her chair, bewildered and as still as death, trembling at the thought that M. Fauvel or Madeleine might enter at any moment, he pressed a kiss upon his mother's forehead—and fled.
Translated for 'A Library of the World's Best Literature.'
M. LECOQ'S SYSTEM
From 'File No. 113'
In the centre of a large and curiously furnished room, half library and half actor's study, was seated at a desk the same person wearing gold spectacles who had said at the police station to the accused cashier Prosper Bertomy, "Take courage!" This was M. Lecoq in his official character.
Upon the entrance of Fanferlot, who advanced respectfully, curving his backbone as he bowed, M. Lecoq slightly lifted his head and laid down his pen, saying, "Ah! you have come at last, my boy! Well, you don't seem to be progressing with the Bertomy case."
"Why, really," stammered Fanferlot, "you know—"
"I know that you have muddled everything, until you are so blinded that you are ready to give over."
"But master, it was not I—"
M. Lecoq had arisen and was pacing the floor. Suddenly he stopped before Fanferlot, nicknamed "the Squirrel."
"What do you think, Master Squirrel," he asked in a hard and ironical tone, "of a man who abuses the confidence of those who employ him, who reveals enough of what he has discovered to make the evidence misleading, and who betrays for the benefit of his foolish vanity the cause of justice—and an unhappy prisoner?"
The frightened Fanferlot recoiled a step.
"I should say," he began, "I should say—"
"You think this man should be punished and dismissed; and you are right. The less a profession is honored, the more honorable should be those who follow it. You however are treacherous. Ah! Master Squirrel, we are ambitious, and we try to play the police in our own way! We let Justice wander where she will, while we search for other things. It takes a more cunning bloodhound than you, my boy, to hunt without a hunter and at his own risk."
"But master, I swear—"
"Be silent. Do you wish me to prove that you have told everything to the examining magistrate, as was your duty? Go to! While others were charging the cashier, you informed against the banker! You watched him; you became intimate with his valet de chambre!"
Was M. Lecoq really in anger? Fanferlot, who knew him well, doubted it a little; but with this devil of a man one never quite knew how to take him.
"If you were only clever," he continued, "but no! You wish to be a master, and you are not even a good workman."
"You are right, master," said Fanferlot piteously, who could deny no longer. "But how could I work upon a business like this, when there was no trace, no mark, no sign, no conviction,—nothing, nothing?"
M. Lecoq raised his shoulders.
"Poor boy!" he said. "Know, then, that the day when you were summoned with the commissary to verify the robbery, you had—I will not say certainly but very probably—between your two large and stupid hands the means of knowing which key, the banker's or the cashier's, had been used in committing the theft."
"What an idea!"
"You want proof? Very well. Do you remember that mark which you observed on the side of the copper? It struck you, for you did not repress an exclamation when you saw it. You examined it carefully with a glass; and you were convinced that it was quite fresh, and therefore made recently. You said, and with reason, that this mark dated from the moment of the theft. But with what had it been made? With a key, evidently. That being the case, you should have demanded the keys of the banker and the cashier, and examined them attentively. One of these would have shown some atoms of the green paint with which a strong-box is usually coated."
Fanferlot listened with open mouth to this explanation. At the last words, he slapped his forehead violently, and cried—of himself—"Imbecile!"
"You are right," replied M. Lecoq—"imbecile. What! With such a guide before your eyes, you neglected it and drew no conclusion! This is the one clue to the affair. If I find the guilty one, it will be by means of this mark, and I will find him; I am determined to do it."
When away from Lecoq, Fanferlot, nicknamed the Squirrel, often slandered and defied him; but in his presence he yielded to the magnetic influence which this extraordinary man exercised upon all who came near him.
Such exact information and such minute details perplexed his mind. Where and how could M. Lecoq have gathered them?
"You have been studying the case, master?"
"Probably. But as I am not infallible, I may have let some valuable point escape me. Sit down, and tell me all that you know."
One could not prevaricate with M. Lecoq. Therefore Fanferlot told the exact truth,—which was not his custom. However, before the end of his recital, his vanity prevented him from telling how he had been tricked by Mademoiselle Nina Gypsy and the stout gentleman.
Unfortunately, M. Lecoq was never informed by halves.
"It seems to me, Master Squirrel," he said, "that you have forgotten something. How far did you follow the empty cab?"
Fanferlot, despite his assurance, blushed to his ears, and dropped his eyes like a schoolboy caught in a guilty act.
"O patron," he stammered, "you know that too? How could you have—"
Suddenly a thought flashed through his brain: he stopped, and bounding from his chair, cried, "Oh, I am sure—that stout gentleman with the red whiskers was you!"
Fanferlot's surprise gave such a ridiculous expression to his face that M. Lecoq could not help smiling.
"Then it was you," continued the amazed detective, "it was you, that fat man at whom I stared. I did not recognize you! Ah, patron, what an actor you would make if you pleased! And I was disguised also!"
"But very poorly, my poor boy, I tell you for your own good. Do you think a heavy beard and a blouse sufficient to evade detection? But the eye, stupid fellow, the eye! It is the eye that must be changed. There is the secret."
This theory of disguise explains why the official, lynx-like Lecoq never appeared at the police office without his gold spectacles.
"But then, patron," continued Fanferlot, working out the idea, "you have made the little girl confess, although Madame Alexandre failed? You know then why she left 'The Grand-Archange'; why she did not wait for M. Louis de Clameran; and why she bought calico dresses for herself?"
"She never acts without my instructions."
"In this case," said the detective, greatly discouraged, "there is nothing more for me to do except acknowledge myself a fool."
"No, Squirrel," replied M. Lecoq with kindness; "no, you are not a fool; you are simply wrong in undertaking a task beyond your powers. Have you made one progressive step since you began this case? No. This only proves that you are incomparable as a lieutenant, but that you have not the sang-froid of a general. I will give you an aphorism; keep it, and make it a rule of conduct—'Some men may shine in the second who are eclipsed in the first rank.'"...
Egotist, like all great artists, M. Lecoq had never had, nor did he wish to have, a pupil. He worked alone. He despised assistants; for he did not wish to share the pleasures of triumph nor the bitterness of defeat.
Therefore Fanferlot, who knew his patron so well, was astonished to hear him, who had heretofore given nothing but orders, helping him with counsel.
He was so mystified that he could not help showing his surprise.
"It seems to me, patron," he risked saying, "that you take a strong personal interest in this case, that you study it so closely."
M. Lecoq started nervously,—which motion escaped his detective,—and then, frowning, he said in a hard voice:—
"It is your nature to be curious, Master Squirrel; but take care that you do not go too far. Do you understand?"
Fanferlot began to offer excuses.
"Enough! Enough!" interrupted M. Lecoq. "If I lend you a helping hand, it is because I wish to. I wish to be the head while you are the arm. Alone, with your preconceived ideas, you never would find the guilty one. If we two do not find him together, then I am not M. Lecoq."
"We shall succeed, if you make it your business."
"Yes, I am entangled in it, and during four days I have learned many things. However, keep this quiet. I have reasons for not being known in this case. Whatever happens, I forbid you to mention my name. If we succeed, the success must be given to you. And above all, do not seek explanations. Be satisfied with what I tell you."
These charges seemed to fill Fanferlot with confidence.
"I will be discreet, patron," he promised.
"I depend upon you, my boy. To begin: Carry this photograph of the strong box to the examining magistrate. M. Patrigent, I know, is as perplexed as possible upon the subject of the prisoner. You must explain, as if it were your own discovery, what I have just shown you. When you repeat all this to him with these indications, I am sure he will release the cashier. Prosper Bertomy, the accused cashier, must be free before I begin my work."
"I understand, patron. But shall I let M. Patrigent see that I suspect another than the banker or the cashier?"
"Certainly. Justice demands that you follow up the case. M. Patrigent will charge you to watch Prosper; reply that you will not lose sight of him. I assure you that he will be in good hands."
"And if he asks news of—Mademoiselle Gypsy?"
M. Lecoq hesitated for a moment.
"You will say to him," he said finally, "that you have decided, in the interest of Prosper, to place her in a house where she can watch some one whom you suspect."
The joyous Fanferlot rolled the photograph, took his hat, and prepared to leave. M. Lecoq detained him by a gesture:—"I have not finished," he said. "Do you know how to drive a carriage and take care of a horse?"
"Why, patron, you ask me that—an old rider of the Bouthor Circus?"
"Very well. As soon as the judge has dismissed you, return home, and prepare a wig and livery of a valet de chambre of the first class; and having dressed, go with this letter to the Agency on the Rue Delorme."
"But, patron—"
"There are no 'buts,' my boy; for this agent will send you to M. Louis de Clameran, who needs a new valet de chambre, his own having left yesterday evening."
"Excuse me if I dare say that you are deceived. Clameran will not agree to the conditions: he is no friend of the cashier."
"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 Hôtel 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.'
BÉNITO PEREZ GALDÓS
(1845-)
BY WILLIAM HENRY BISHOP
I
he 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, Pérez Galdós 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, José María de Pereda, Armando Palacio Valdés, Benito Pérez Galdós, 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. Valdés and Galdós 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, Valdés 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 Galdós, an impression of gloom; yet even in these we are charmed on the way by his light touch and easy grace of treatment. Galdós 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 mediævalism, 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 Galdós'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 Valdés'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 mediæval saints, even to the point of wearing hair-cloth and beating her tender shoulders with a scourge. Galdós's 'Doña 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 Galdós 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 Böhl 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 Pérez Galdós 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 Galdós 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 Españiolas Contemporanéas,' 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 Galdós 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 Lázaro 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 café 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 Porreños, three ancient spinster sisters of a fallen patrician house in 'El Audaz,' which are equal to his later work.
He next entered upon an extensive enterprise which soon began to give him both reputation and profit. This was the writing of a score of historical romances, after the model of those of Erckmann-Chatrian, called 'Episódios Nacionales' (National Episodes). They are divided into two series, the first beginning with 'Trafalgar' (1873), the second with 'El Equipaje del Rey José' (King Joseph's Baggage: 1875). They deal with the two modern periods comprising the deliverance of the country from the usurpation of the French, and the more obscure struggles against Ferdinand VII., who sought to reduce the country under the same absolutist rule that had prevailed before the ideas of the French Revolution liberalized the whole of Europe. The history in these romances is intermingled with personal interests and adventures, to give it an air of informality; and though each is complete in itself, some knowledge of Spanish history is desirable as an aid to understanding them. They are considerably interlinked among themselves, the same characters appearing more or less in successive volumes. The hero of the first series is one Gabriel, who narrates them all in the first person. He is a poor boy who becomes servant to a family near Cadiz. He accompanies his master on board the huge Santissima Trinidad, the largest ship of her age, and is able to describe in detail the action of Trafalgar, the description being the more interesting for us as coming from the Spanish point of view. In 'La Corte de Carlos IV.' (The Court of Charles IV.: 1873), we find him page to a leading actress, and an eye-witness to the degeneracy of that monarch and his favorite Godoy, which resulted in the seizure of the country by Napoleon for his brother Joseph. In 'La Batalla de los Arapiles' (translated by Rollo Ogden as 'The Battle of Salamanca': 1875), the last of the series, the same Gabriel is a major, and performs an important commission for Wellington. He has risen to this level step by step, and on the way has had as many adventures as one of Dumas's guardsmen, and has carried them off as gallantly. In the second series of 'Episódios,' Salvador Monsalud is the principal character. He is a young fellow who is led by dire want—and also by sharing the liberalized French view of the decadence and worthlessness of the Spanish form of rule—to take service in the body-guard of Joseph Bonaparte. A chapter full of strength and pathos, in 'King Joseph's Baggage,' shows him disowned by his mother and cast off by his village sweetheart on account of such service, both of them frantic with a spirit of independence like that which animated the Maid of Saragossa. A feature of this book that gives it originality is that the action turns not upon the usual principal features of battle, but upon the fate of the rich baggage train of booty with which Joseph Bonaparte had hoped to escape to France after his brief, disastrous reign.
The 'Episódios' have had an extensive influence, and have been imitated, under a like title, in the Spanish Americas. The author's tone toward the past is generally severe and disdainful. "Had Spain, perchance, a 'constitution' when she was the foremost nation in the world?" he puts into the mouth of one of his characters, with sardonic intent. He has been called unappreciative, and his attitude towards Spanish antiquity has been protested against by other leading writers, of more conservative feeling, as unwarranted. These romances contain some passages showing aversion to the barbarities of war, but in general they are less humanitarian than those of Erckmann-Chatrian: they are principally devoted to glorifying Spanish fortitude and courage. These books are a great advance upon the two earlier novels; from the first they showed literary workmanship of a high order: they possess ingenuity of plot, sufficient probability, and graphic power of description, movement, and conversation. In the latter respects, indeed, they surpass some of the author's later works that make more serious pretensions.
The wider and more definitely literary reputation of Pérez Galdós rests upon more than a score of other works, in addition to the above. These are distinctly novels, as contrasted with romances; and they treat of contemporary life, in a method that aims to be conscientiously observant and impartial. It is often said, without much reflection, that we see enough of the things close about us, and need our literary recreation in the remote and strange. But it must be recalled that we see those things without the eyes of genius, and he is a true benefactor who poetizes and dignifies life in making evident that all of life is vivid with interest, even that part of it nearest to us, which without such illumination we may have thought devoid of it. The words in which the ostensible narrator of 'Lo Prohibido' (Forbidden Fruit: 1885), explains the purpose of his journal may well enough be taken to exhibit the method of Galdós. It was to set down "my prosaic adventures, events that in no way differ from those that fill and make up the lives of other men. I aspire to no further effects than such as the sincere and unaffected presentation of the truth may produce; and I have no design upon the reader's emotions by means of calculated surprises, frights, or conjurer's tricks, through which things look one way for a time and then turn out in a manner diametrically opposite."
The titles of a number of his principal books, not hitherto given, with dates, are as follows. The dates are those when they were written, and they were generally published shortly after: 'Doña Perfecta,' 1876; 'Gloria,' 1876; 'Torquemada en la Hoguera' (Torquemada at the Stake: 1876); 'Marianela,' 1878; 'La Familia de Leon Roch' (Leon Roch's Family: 1878); 'Los Cien Mil Hijos de San Luis' (The Hundred Thousand Sons of Saint Louis: 1877) of the Episódios; 'Un Faccioso Más' (A Rebel the More: 1879) the completion of the Episódios; 'La Desheredada' (The Disowned: 1881); 'El Amigo Manso' (Friend Mildman: 1882); 'El Doctor Centeno,' 1883; 'Tormento,' 1884; 'La de Bringas' (That Mrs. de Bringas: 1884); 'Fortunata y Jacinta,' 1886; 'Miau,' 1888; 'La Incógnita' (The Unknown: 1889); 'Realidad' (Reality: 1890); 'Angel Guerra,' 1891; 'Torquemada en la Cruz' (Torquemada on the Cross: 1894); 'Torquemada en el Purgatorio' (Torquemada in Purgatory: 1894); 'Torquemada y San Pedro,' 1895; 'Nazarin,' 1895; 'Halma,' 1896.
Even in his new departure, Galdós did not at once enter upon his final manner. 'Doña Perfecta,' 'The Family of Leon Roch,' and 'Gloria' are quite distinctly didactic, or "novels with a purpose"; while 'Marianela' is somewhat cloyingly sentimental, a prose poem after the manner of Ouida. In spite of all this, however, 'Doña Perfecta' has been pronounced by many his best work. It is the one that has obtained greatest celebrity abroad, and it is the one, all things considered, likely to be the most satisfactory example of his work to the English reader. 'La Desheredada' marks the transition to his final period, and he has put it upon record that with this book the real difficulties of his vocation began. It is a poignantly affecting story of a poor girl who was brought up, by a parent half knave and half insane, to believe that she was not his daughter but that of a noble house. After his death she undertakes in all good faith to prosecute her claim, and is thrown into prison as an impostor. Her heart is broken by the disillusionment; she cannot adjust herself to life again without the sweetness of that beguiling belief, and so, in the end, not having the boldness to die, she throws herself upon the street, a social outcast. Both in the person of Isidora and others, the book is a moving treatise on false education. Other leading figures are her brother, a young "hoodlum" and thief, the burden of whose career she has also to bear upon her slender shoulders, and the pampered son of the poor Sastres, who have denied themselves bread that he might have an education and luxuries. He has a hundred fine schemes for getting a living, but never a one of them includes turning his hand to a stroke of honest labor.
'El Amigo Manso' is an extended piece of character-drawing, self-told, in a gently humorous vein. It gives an account of a college instructor, very benevolent, very methodical and prudent, and a trifle conceited and patronizing, who is in love with a pretty governess. By the time he has settled all his judicious pros and cons, the pretty governess, who really cared nothing about him, is engaged to a suitor of a more dashing sort. The scenes of 'Tormento,' 'La de Bringas,' and 'Miau' are laid chiefly among the class of minor office-holders, with whose manners the author shows an exhaustive familiarity, and each has its peculiar tragic situation in itself. 'Realidad,' written once in the form of a novel, and again as a drama, treats of the subject of a wife's infidelity, as it might pass in real life, instead of in the conventional and hackneyed way. Its title seems to propose to adhere even closer to the exact truth than do the others. There come to mind, in its suppressed passion and its calm, intellectual, and bitter philosophy, suggestions both of Ibsen and Suderman. The banker Orozco, a noble and reserved nature, does not slay his wife, does not banish her from him, nor even make her reproaches. Augusta, on her side, wonders if his mind is not giving way. This bitter commentary on life is as near as her smaller mind can approach to a comprehension of his magnanimous conduct. The same Augusta, earlier, has said in conversation, "Real life is the greatest of all inventors; the only one who is ever ready, fresh, and inexhaustible in resource." In these books, however serious, the purpose does not obtrude to the detriment of art; the reader is left free to draw his own conclusions, as from events in actual life; the author ostensibly is neither for nor against, and yet he leaves us in no doubt as to his decision, always a moral and stimulating one.
The favorite scenes of Galdós's books are in Madrid and the small suburban resorts round about it, or at the numerous mineral springs which are so important a feature of Spanish summer life. He himself lives at Madrid, but goes for the season to a summer place he owns on the bold cliffs of the Bay of Biscay, at Santander. There, too he is near to Pereda, between whom and himself a remarkable friendship exists. A friendship so strong, warm, and long continued has been recognized as a notable feature in the careers of both. It is the more remarkable because except in literature, which both set above everything else, he is violently opposed to most of the views of Pereda—a conservative of the conservatives, even to the point of preferring the absolutist pretender Don Carlos for king. Even at Madrid and at Santander, however, Galdós's scenery is mere stage setting; he does not describe nature sympathetically nor aim to render local color in an accurate way. As the action must pass somewhere, he gives it just as much of a setting as will suffice, and seems satisfied with that. The impression of his books, on the whole, is a gloomy one. He who sees life clearly must perchance see it darkly, and few see it more clearly than Galdós. Yet his admirers will not have it that he is pessimistic, because Nature herself is not pessimistic. Even the sadness of nightfall ought not to be considered gloomy, they say, with much show of reason, since it is only the preparation for another day.
THE FIRST NIGHT OF A FAMOUS PLAY, IN THE YEAR 1807
From 'The Court of Charles IV.' Copyright 1888, by W.S. Gottsberger. Reprinted by permission of George G. Peck, publisher, New York
[Gabriel, a boy of sixteen, has taken service as page with a very charming actress of the Principe Theatre. Between this theatre and La Cruz exists the same sort of hostility as between the rival theatres at Venice when Goldoni inaugurated his reform. La Cruz represents the new and "natural" spirit in the drama, as against the absurd artificial tradition that had prevailed up to that time. A part of Gabriel's duties is to go and hiss the plays at that theatre. The principal occasion of this kind is when he accompanies a band, led by a rival playwright, to the first performance of 'El Sí de las Niñas' (The Maidens' Yes), by the famous Moratin, the leading piece of the new school.]
"What an opening!" he [the rival poet and playwright] exclaimed, as he listened to the first dialogue between Don Diego and Simon. "A pretty way to begin a comedy! The scene a village inn! What can happen of any interest in a village inn? In all my plays, and they are many,—though never a one has been represented,—the action opens in a Corinthian garden, with monumental fountains to the right and left, and a temple of Juno in the background; or in a wide square with three regiments drawn up, and in the background the city of Warsaw, with a bridge, and so forth. And just listen to the twaddle this old man is made to talk! He is about to marry a young girl who has been brought up by the nuns of Guadalajara. Well, is that very remarkable? Is not that a matter of every-day occurrence?"
Pouring out these remarks, that confounded poet did not allow me to hear a word of the piece, and though I answered all his comments with humbly acquiescent monosyllables, I only wished that he would hold his tongue, deuce take him!...
"What a vulgar subject! what low ideas!" he exclaimed, loud enough for every one to hear. "And this is how comedies are written!"...
"But let us listen to it," said I, finding my chief's comments quite intolerable. "We can laugh at Moratin afterwards."
"But I cannot bear such a medley of absurdities," he went on. "We do not come to the theatre to see just what is to be seen any day in the streets, or in every house you go into. If instead of enlarging on her matrimonial experiences, the lady were to come in invoking curses on an enemy because he had killed one-and-twenty of her sons in battle, and left her with only the twenty-second, still an infant at the breast, and if she had to carry that one off to save him from being eaten by the besieged, all dying of famine—then there would be some interest in the plot, and the public would clap their hands till they were sore. Gabriel, my boy, we must protest, protest vehemently. We must thump the floor with our feet and sticks to show that we are bored and out of patience. Yawn; open your mouth till your jaws are dislocated; look about you; let all the neighbors see that we are people of taste, and utterly weary of this tiresome and monstrous piece."
No sooner said than done: we began thumping on the floor, and yawning in chorus, exclaiming, "What a bore!" "What a dreary piece!" "What waste of money!" and other phrases to the same effect; all of which soon bore fruit. The party in the pit imitated our patriotic example with great exactness. A general murmur of dissatisfaction was presently audible from every part of the theatre; for though the author had enemies, he had no lack of friends too, scattered throughout the pit, boxes, and upper tiers, and they were not slow to protest against our demonstration, sometimes by applauding, and then again by roaring at us with threats and oaths, to be silent; till a stentorian voice from the very back of the pit bellowed, "Turn the blackguards out!" raising a noisy storm of applause that reduced us to silence.
Our poetaster was almost jumping out of his skin with indignation, and persisted in making his remarks as the piece went on....
"A pretty plot indeed! It seems hardly credible that a civilized nation should applaud it. I would sentence Moratin to the galleys, and forbid his writing such coarse stuff as long as he lives. So you call this a play, Gabrielito? There is no intrigue, no plot, no surprise, no catastrophe, no illusion, no quid pro quo; no attempt at disguising a character to make it seem another—not even the little complication that comes of two men provoking each other as enemies, and then discovering that they are father and son. If Don Diego now, were to catch his nephew and kill him out of hand in the cellar, and prepare a banquet and have a dish of the victim's flesh served up to his bride, well disguised with spice and bay leaves, there would be some spirit in the thing."...
I could not, in fact, conceal my enjoyment of the scene, which seemed to me a masterpiece of nature, grace, and interesting comedy. The poet however called me to order, abusing me for deserting to the hostile camp.
"I beg your pardon," said I. "It was a mistake. And yet—does it not strike you, too, that this scene is not altogether bad?"
"How should you be able to judge?—a mere novice who never wrote a line in your life! Pray what is there in this scene in the least remarkable, or pathetic, or historical?"
"But it is nature itself. I feel that I have seen in the real world just what the author has set on the stage."
"Gaby! simpleton! that is exactly what makes it so bad. Have you not observed that in 'Frederick the Second,' in 'Catharine of Russia,' in 'The Slave of Negroponte,' and other fine works, nothing ever takes place that has the smallest resemblance to real life? Is not everything in those plays strange, startling, exceptional, wonderful, and surprising? That is why they are so good. The poets of to-day do not choose to imitate those of my time, and hence art has fallen to the lowest depths."
"And yet, begging your pardon," I said, "I cannot help thinking—The play is wretched, I quite agree, and when you say so there must be a good reason for it. But the idea here seems to me a good one, since I fancy the author has intended to censure the vicious system of education which young girls get nowadays."...
"And who asks the author to introduce all this philosophy?" said the pedant. "What has the theatre to do with moralizing? In the 'Magician of Astrakhan,' in 'Leon and the Asturias Gave Heraldry to Spain,' and in the 'Triumphs of Don Pelayo'—plays that all the world admires—did you ever find a passage that describes how girls are to be brought up?"
"I have certainly read or heard somewhere that the theatre was to serve the purposes of entertainment and instruction."
"Stuff and nonsense!"
Translation of Clara Bell.
THE WEDDING DRESS.
Photogravure from a Painting by Worms.
DOÑA PERFECTA'S DAUGHTER
From 'Doña Perfecta.' Copyright 1895, by Harper & Brothers
[Pepe Rey, a young engineer, arrives at Orbajosa to marry his cousin Rosario, the match having been made up between his father and Doña Perfecta, the girl's mother, who is warmly attached to the father of Pepe, her brother, and furthermore under heavy obligations to him for his excellent management of her large property interests. The landscape is the arid and poverty-stricken country of central Spain, though the town itself—"seated on the slope of a hill from the midst of whose closely clustered houses arose many dark towers, and on the height above it the ruins of a dilapidated castle"—such a town would probably be more appreciated by a traveler from abroad and a lover of the picturesque, than by a Spaniard, too familiar with its type. Orbajosa is a little place, full of narrow prejudices and vanities. Pepe Rey, with his modern ways, soon finds that he is wounding these prejudices at every turn. We look on with pained surprise at the difficulties that grow up around the young man, an excellent and kind-hearted fellow. Lawsuits are multiplied against him; he is turned out of the cathedral by order of the bishop for strolling about during service-time to look at some architectural features; and he is refused the hand of his cousin. Doña Perfecta herself joins in this hostility, which finally develops into a venomous bitterness that menaces his life. Such a feeling was not the outgrowth of mere provincial narrowness: we see in the end that it was the result of the plot of Maria Remedios, a woman of a humble sort, who aspired to secure the heiress Rosario for her own chubby-faced home-bred son. She influenced the village priest, and he influenced Doña Perfecta. Early in the day the young engineer would have abandoned the sinister place but for Rosario, who really loved him. She conveyed to him, on a scrap from the margin of a newspaper, the message:
"They say you are going away. If you do, I shall die."
She is a charming picture of girlhood,—lovely, true-hearted, affectionate, aspiring to be heroic, and yet crippled at last by a filial conscience and the long habit of clinging dependence. She has agreed to flee at night with her lover, and he is already in the garden. Her mother, the stern Doña Perfecta, ranging uneasily through the house, enters her room about the appointed time for the escape.]
"Why don't you sleep?" her mother asked her.
"What time is it?" asked the girl.
"It will soon be midnight."...
Rosario was trembling, and everything about her denoted the keenest anxiety. She lifted her eyes to heaven supplicatingly, and then turned them on her mother with a look of the utmost terror.
"Why, what is the matter with you?"
"Did you not say it was midnight?"
"Yes."
"Then—but is it already midnight?"...
"Something is the matter with you; you have something on your mind," said her mother, fixing on her daughter her penetrating eyes.
"Yes—I wanted to tell you," stammered the girl, "I wanted to say—Nothing, nothing; I will go to sleep."
"Rosario, Rosario! your mother can read your heart like an open book," exclaimed Doña Perfecta with severity. "You are agitated. I have already told you that I am willing to pardon you if you will repent, if you are a good and sensible girl."
"Why, am I not good? Ah, mamma, mamma! I am dying." Rosario burst into a flood of bitter and disconsolate tears.
"What are these tears about?" said her mother, embracing her. "If they are tears of repentance, blessed be they."
"I don't repent! I can't repent!" cried the girl, in a burst of sublime despair. She lifted her head, and in her face was depicted a sudden inspired strength. Her hair fell in disorder over her shoulders. Never was there seen a more beautiful image of a rebellious angel.
"What is this? Have you lost your senses?" said Doña Perfecta, laying both hands on her daughter's shoulders.
"I am going away! I am going away!" said the girl with the exaltation of delirium. And she sprang out of bed.
"Rosario, Rosario—my daughter! For God's sake, what is this?"
"Ah mamma, señora!" exclaimed the girl, embracing her mother; "bind me fast!"
"In truth, you would deserve it. What madness is this?"
"Bind me fast! I am going away—I am going away with him!"...
"Has he told you to do so? has he counseled you to do that? has he commanded you to do that?" asked the mother, launching these words like thunderbolts against her daughter.
"He has counseled me to do it. We have agreed to be married. We must be married, mamma, dear mamma. I will love you—I know that I ought to love you—I shall be forever lost if I do not love you."
"Rosario, Rosario!" cried Doña Perfecta in a terrible voice, "rise!"
There was a short pause.
"This man—has he written to you?"
"Yes."
"Have you seen him again since that night?"
"Yes."
"And you have written to him?"
"I have written to him also. O señora! why do you look at me in that way? You are not my mother."
"Would to God that I were not! Rejoice in the harm you are doing me. You are killing me; you have given me my death-blow!" cried Doña Perfecta, with indescribable agitation. "You say that that man—"
"Is my husband—I will be his wife, protected by the law. You are not a woman! Why do you look at me in that way? You make me tremble. Mother, mother, do not condemn me!"
"You have already condemned yourself—that is enough. Obey me, and I will forgive you. Answer me—when did you receive letters from that man?"
"To-day."
"What treachery! what infamy!" cried her mother, roaring rather than speaking. "Had you appointed a meeting?"
"Yes."
"When?"
"To-night."
"Where?"
"Here, here! I will confess everything, everything! I know it is a crime. I am a wretch; but you, my mother, will take me out of this hell. Give your consent. Say one word to me, only one word!"
"That man here in my house!" cried Doña Perfecta, springing back several paces from her daughter.
Rosario followed her on her knees.
At the same instant three blows were heard, three crashes, three explosions. [Maria Remedios had spied upon Pepe Rey, the lover; shown Caballuco, a brutal servant and ally, how to follow him stealthily into the garden; and had then come to arouse the house.] It was the heart of Maria Remedios knocking at the door through the knocker. The house trembled with an awful dread. Mother and daughter stood as motionless as statues.
A servant went down-stairs to open the door, and shortly afterward Maria Remedios, who was not now a woman but a basilisk enveloped in a mantle, entered Doña Perfecta's room. Her face, flushed with anxiety, exhaled fire.
"He is there, he is there," she said, as she entered. "He got into the garden through the condemned door." She paused for breath at every syllable.
"I know already," returned Doña Perfecta, with a sort of bellow.
Rosario fell senseless to the floor.
"Let us go down-stairs," said Doña Perfecta, without paying any attention to her daughter's swoon.
The two women glided down-stairs like two snakes. The maids and the man-servant were in the hall, not knowing what to do. Doña Perfecta passed through the dining-room into the garden, followed by Maria Remedios.
"Fortunately we have Ca-Ca-Ca-balluco there," said the canon's niece.
"Where?"
"In the garden, also. He cli-cli-climbed over the wall."
Doña Perfecta explored the darkness with her wrathful eyes. Rage gave them the singular power of seeing in the dark that is peculiar to the feline race.
"I see a figure there," she said. "It is going towards the oleanders."
"It is he," cried Remedios. "But there comes Ramos—Ramos!" [Cristóbal Ramos, or "Cabulluco.">[
The colossal figure of the Centaur was plainly distinguishable.
"Towards the oleanders, Ramos! Towards the oleanders!"
Doña Perfecta took a few steps forward. Her hoarse voice, vibrating with a terrible accent, hissed forth these words:—
"Cristobal, Cristobal,—kill him!"
A shot was heard. Then another.
Translation of Mary J. Serrano.
A FAMILY OF OFFICE-HOLDERS
Don Francisco de Bringas y Caballero had a second-class clerkship in one of the most ancient of the royal bureaus. He belonged to a family which had held just such offices for time out of mind. "Government employees were his parents and his grandparents, and it is believed that his great-grandparents, and even the ancestors of these, served in one way and another in the administration of the two worlds." His wife Doña Rosalia Pipaon was equally connected with the official class, and particularly with that which had to do with the domestic service of the royal abodes. Thus, "on producing her family tree, this was found to show not so much glorious deeds of war and statesmanship as those humbler doings belonging to a long and intimate association with the royal person. Her mother had been lady of the queen's wardrobe, her uncle a halberdier of the royal guard, her grandfather keeper of the buttery, other uncles at various removes, equerries, pages, dispatch-bearers, huntsmen, and managers of the royal farm at Aranjuez, and so forth and so on.... For this dame there existed two things wholly Divine; namely, heaven and that almost equally desirable dwelling-place for the elect which we indicate by the mere laconic word 'the Palace.' In the Palace were her family history and her ideal; her aspiration was that Bringas might obtain a superior post in the royal exchequer, and that then they should go and take up their abode in one of the apartments of the second story of the great mansion which were conceded to such tenants." The above is from 'Tormento.' In the next succeeding novel, 'La de Bringas,' this aspiration is gratified; the Bringas family are installed in the Palace, in the quarters assigned to the employees of the royal household. The efforts of two of their acquaintances to find them, in the puzzling intricacies of the place, are thus amusingly described.
ABOVE-STAIRS IN A ROYAL PALACE
From 'La de Bringas'
Well, this is about the way it was. We threw ourselves bravely into the interminable corridor, a veritable street, or alley at least, paved with red tiles, feebly lighted with gas jets, and full of doublings and twistings. Now and then it spread out into broad openings like little plazas, inundated with sunlight which entered through large openings from the main court-yard. This illumination penetrated lengthwise along the white walls of the narrow passageways, alleys, or tunnels, or whatever they may be called, growing ever feebler and more uncertain as it went, till finally it fainted away entirely at sight of the fan-shaped yellow gas flames, smoking little circlets upon their protecting metal disks. There were uncounted paneled doors with numbers on them, some newly painted and others moldering and weather-stained, but not one displaying the figure we were seeking. At this one you would see a rich silken bell cord, some happy find in the royal upholstery shop, while the next had nothing more than a poor frayed rope's-end; and these were an indication of what was likely to be found within, as to order and neatness or disarray and squalor. So, too, the mats or bits of carpet laid before the doors threw a useful light upon the character of the lodgings. We came upon vacant apartments with cobwebs spun across the openings, and the door gratings thick with dust, and through broken transoms, drew chill drafts that conveyed the breath of silence and desolation. Even whole precincts were abandoned, and the vaultings, of unequal height, returned the sound of our footsteps hollowly to our ears. We passed up one stairway, then down another, and then, as likely as not, we would ascend again.... The labyrinthine maze led us on and ever onward....
"It is useless to come here," at length said Pez, decidedly losing patience, "without charts and a mariner's compass. I suppose we are now in the south wing of the palace. The roofs down there must be those of the Hall of Columns and the outer stairway, are they not? What a huge mass of a place!" The roofs of which he spoke were great pyramidal shapes protected with lead, and they covered in the ceilings on which Bayeu's frescoed cherubs cut their lively pigeon-wings and pirouettes.
Still going on and on and onward without pause, we found ourselves shut up in a place without exit, a considerable inclosure lighted from the top, and we had to turn round and beat a retreat by the way we had entered. Any one who knows the palace and its symmetrical grandeur only from without could never divine all these irregularities that constitute a veritable small town in its upper regions. In truth, for an entire century there has been but one continual modifying of the original plan, a stopping up here and an opening there, a condemning of staircases, a widening of some rooms at the expense of others, a changing of corridors into living-rooms and of living-rooms into corridors, and a cutting through of partitions and a shutting up of windows. You fall in with stairways that begin but never arrive anywhere, and with balconies that are but the made-over roof coverings of dwelling-places below. These dove-cotes were once stately drawing-rooms, and on the other hand, these fine salons have been made out of the inclosing space of a grand staircase. Then again winding stairs are frequent; but if you should take them, Heaven knows what would become of you; and frequent, too, are glazed doors permanently closed, with naught behind them but silence, dust, and darkness....
"We are looking for the apartment of Don Francisco Bringas."
"Bringas? yes, yes," said an old woman; "you're close to it. All you have got to do is, go down the first circular stairway you come to, and then make a half-turn. Bringas? yes to be sure; he's sacristan of the chapel."
"Sacristan,—he? What is the matter with you? He is head clerk of the Administrative Department."
"Oh, then he must be lower down, just off the terrace. I suppose you know your way to the fountain?"
"No, not we."
"You know the stairs called the Cáceres Staircase?"
"No, not that either."
"At any rate, you know where the Oratory is?"
"We know nothing about it."
"But the choir of the Oratory? but the dove-cotes?"—
Sum total, we had not the slightest acquaintance with any of that congeries of winding turns, sudden tricks, and baffling surprises. The architectural arrangement was a mad caprice, a mocking jest at all plan and symmetry. Nevertheless, despite our notable lack of experience we stuck to our quest, and even carried our infatuation so far as to reject the services of a boy who offered himself as our guide.
"We are now in the wing facing on the Plaza de Oriente," said Pez; "that is to say, at exactly the opposite extreme from the wing in which our friend resides." His geographical notions were delivered with the gravity and conviction of some character in Jules Verne. "Hence, the problem now demanding our attention is by what route to get from here to the western wing. In the first place, the cupola of the chapel and the grand stairway roof-covering furnish us with a certain basis; we should take our bearings from them. I assume that, having once arrived in the western wing, we shall be numskulls indeed if we do not strike Bringas's abode. All the same, I for one will never return to these outlandish regions without a pocket compass, and what is more, without a good supply of provender too, against such emergencies as this."
Before striking out on the new stage of our explorations, as thus projected, we paused to look down from the window. The Plaza de Oriente lay below us in a beautiful panorama, and beyond it a portion of Madrid crested with at least fifty cupolas, steeples, and bell towers. The equestrian Philip IV. appeared a mere toy, and the Royal Theatre a paltry shed.... The doves had their nests far below where we stood, and we saw them, by pairs or larger groups, plunge headlong downward into the dizzy abyss, and then presently come whirling upward again, with swift and graceful motion, and settle on the carved capitals and moldings. It is credibly stated that all the political revolutions do not matter a jot to these doves, and there is nothing either in the ancient pile they inhabit or in the free realms of air around it, to limit their sway. They remain undisputed masters of the place.
Away we go once more. Pez begins to put the geographical notions he has acquired from the books of Jules Verne yet further into practice. At every step he stops to say to me, "Now we are making our way northward.—We shall undoubtedly soon find a road or trail on our right, leading to the west.—There is no cause to be alarmed in descending this winding stairway to the second story.—Good, it is done! Well, bless me! where are we now? I don't see the main dome any longer, not so much as a lightning-rod of it.—We are in the realms of the feebly flickering gas once more.—Suppose we ascend again by this other stairway luckily just at hand. What now? Well, here we are back again in the eastward wing and nothing else, just where we were before. Are we? no, yes; see, down there in the court the big dome is still on our right. There's a regular grove of chimney stacks. You may believe it or not, but this sort of thing begins to make my head swim; it seems as if the whole place gave a lurch now and then, like a ship at sea.—The fountain must be over that way, do you see? for the maids are coming and going from there with their pitchers.—Oh well, I for one give the whole thing up. We want a guide, and an expert, or we'll never get out of this. I can't take another step; we've walked miles and I can't stand on my legs.—Hey, there, halloo! send us a guide!—Oh for a guide! Get me out of this infernal tangle quickly!"...
We came at last to Bringas's apartment. When we got there, we understood how we must have passed it, earlier, without knowing it, for its number was quite rubbed out and invisible.
Translation of William Henry Bishop.