William S. Gottsberger, Publisher, New York.
MARIANELA.—By B. Pérez Galdós, from the Spanish by Clara Bell, in one vol. Paper, 50 cts. Cloth, 90 cts.
“Galdós is not a novelist, in the sense that now attaches to that much-abused word, but a romancer, pure and simple, as much so as Hawthorne was, though his intentions are less spiritual, and his methods more material. Marianela is the story of a poor, neglected outcast of a girl, an orphan who is tolerated by a family of miners, as if she were a dog or a cat; who is fed when the humor takes them and there is any food that can be spared, and who is looked down upon by everybody; and a boy Pablo, who is older than she, the son of a well-to-do landed proprietor, whose misfortune it is (the boy’s, we mean) that he was born blind. His deprivation of sight is almost supplied by the eyes of Marianela, who waits upon him, and goes with him in his daily wanderings about the mining country of Socartes, until he knows the whole country by heart and can when need is find his way everywhere alone. As beautiful as she is homely, he forms an ideal of her looks, based upon her devotion to him, colored by his sensitive, spiritual nature, and he loves her, or what he imagines she is, and she returns his love—with fear and trembling, for ignorant as she is she knows that she is not what he believes her to be. They love as two children might, naturally, fervently, entirely. The world contains no woman so beautiful as she, and he will marry her. The idyl of this young love is prettily told, with simplicity, freshness, and something which, if not poetry, is yet poetic. While the course of true love is running smooth with them (for it does sometimes in spite of Shakespeare) there appears upon the scene a brother of the chief engineer of the Socartes mines who is an oculist, and he, after a careful examination of the blind eyes of Pablo, undertakes to perform an operation upon them which he thinks may enable the lad to see. About this time there also comes upon the scene a brother of Pablo’s father, accompanied by his daughter, who is very beautiful. The operation is successful, and Pablo is made to see. He is enchanted with the loveliness of his cousin, and disenchanted of his ideal of Marianela, who dies heart-broken at the fate which she knew would be hers if he was permitted to see her as she was. This is the story of Marianela, which would have grown into a poetic romance under the creative mind and shaping hand of Hawthorne, and which, as conceived and managed by Galdós, is a realistic one of considerable grace and pathos. It possesses the charm of directness and simplicity of narrative, is written with great picturesqueness, and is colored throughout with impressions of Spanish country life.”—The Mail and Express, New York, Thursday, April 12, 1883.
William S. Gottsberger, Publisher, New York.
TRAFALGAR.—A Tale, by B. Pérez Galdós, from the Spanish by Clara Bell, in one vol. Paper, 50 cents. Cloth, 90 cents.