“Au revoir,” said Leon in a choked voice, and he kissed her twice. “This one for Monina, and this for her mother.”
The door opened on a dark staircase; Leon gently pushed Pepa in and hurried away; she reappeared for a moment and he waved his hand.
In a few minutes he had reached his lodgings; crushed with grief he threw himself into his study chair, not knowing whether to find relief in tears or in dumb despair. His heart was broken; and yet the deep and spacious reservoir of sorrow and passion had not yet poured the whole of its crushing contents on his devoted head.
END OF VOL. I.
GLORIA.—A novel, by B. Pérez Galdós, from the Spanish by Clara Bell, in two vols. Paper, $1.00, Cloth, $1.75.
“B. Pérez Galdós is like a whirlwind, resistless as he sweeps everything before him, while beneath, the waters of passion foam and heave and are stirred to their depths. Some chapters of this novel are absolutely agonizing in their intensity of passion, and the surge and rush of words bears the reader along breathless and terrified, till he finds himself almost ready to cry out. In others, the storm is lulled and the plash of waves is as musical as the author’s native tongue. In others still, he drones through the lazy summer day, and the reader goes to sleep. However, the story as a whole is stormy, and the end tragic; yet we are lost in wonder at the man who can so charm us.
“It is throughout a terrible impeachment of religious intolerance. If it had been written for a people possessing the temper of Englishmen or of Americans we should say that it must mark an epoch in the political and religious history of the country. Even written as it is by a Spaniard, and for Spaniards, allowing as we must for Spanish impulsiveness and grandiloquence, which says a great deal to express a very little, we cannot but believe that the work is deeply significant. It is written by a young man and one who is rapidly rising in power and influence; and when he speaks it is with a vehement earnestness which thrills one with the conviction that Spain is awaking. ‘Fresh air,’ cries he, of Spain, ‘open air, free exercise under every wind that blows above or below; freedom to be dragged and buffeted, helped or hindered, by all the forces that are abroad. Let her tear off her mendicant’s hood, her grave-clothes and winding-sheet, and stand forth in the bracing storms of the century. Spain is like a man who is ill from sheer apprehension, and cannot stir for blisters, plasters, bandages and wraps. Away with all this paraphernalia, and the body will recover its tone and vigor.’ Again: ‘Rebel, rebel, your intelligence is your strength. Rise, assert yourself; purge your eyes of the dust which darkens them, and look at truth face to face.’ Strange language this for Spain of the Inquisition, for bigoted, unprogressive, Catholic Spain. The author goes to the root of Spanish decadence; he fearlessly exposes her degradation and declares its cause. All students of Spanish history will find here much that is interesting besides the story.”—The Yale Literary Magazine.