"A woman who was praying in a corner of the temple arose weeping with joy and grief, and hastened to clasp the unhappy mother in her arms and call her daughter. It was her husband's mother, Agustina, who had also gone to the temple to pray for the restoration of the child.
"'Mother,' exclaimed Ascensita, 'I believe in God! I believe in God and hope in His mercy!'
"'My daughter, no one believes in it in vain,' answered Agustina, bursting into tears. And both again knelt and prayed."
The mother's prayer was heard and the child recovered.
In the Popular Narrations, Trueba works up themes already popular among the people, but clothes them in his own words and varies them to suit his own taste. He says in the preface: "The task which I undertook some time ago, and still continue, consists in collecting the narrations, tales or anecdotes that circulate among the people and are the work of the popular invention, which sometimes creates and at others imitates, if it does not plagiarize, trying when it imitates to give to the imitation the form of the original. Some of the writers or collectors abroad, and especially in Germany, who have devoted themselves to a similar task, have followed a method different from mine; since, like the Brothers Grimm, they reproduce the popular tales almost as they have collected them from the lips of the people. This system is not to my taste, because almost all popular tales, although they have a precious base, have an absurd form, and in order to enter worthily into the products of the literary art they need to be perfected by art, and have a moral or philosophical end, which nothing in the sphere of art should be without."
The subjects of some of these stories are well known out of Spain. "St. Peter's Doubts" (Las Dudas de San Pedro) is as old as the Gesta Romanorum (cap. 80), and is familiar to English readers from Parnell's Hermit. Another, "A Century in a Moment" (Un Siglo en un Momento), is the story of the woman allowed after death to come back to the earth and see her lover, whom she finds faithless. Still another, Tragaldabas, is familiar to the readers of Grimm's Household Tales, where it figures as "Godfather Death."
The volume of Popular Tales contains nineteen stories of the most varying description. Some are popular in the broadest sense, as "The Three Counsels" (Los Consejos), in which a soldier whose time of service has expired buys from his captain with his pay three pieces of advice: Always take the short cut on a road, Do not inquire into what does not concern you, and Do nothing without reflection. The soldier on his way home has occasion to put in practice all three counsels, and thereby saves his life and property. Others, are legendary, as Ofero, the legend of St. Christopher, and Casilda, the story of the Moorish king's daughter converted to the Christian religion by a physician from Judea, who proves to be Our Lord. One, "The Wife of the Architect" (La Mujer del Arquitecto), is a local tradition of Toledo, and another, "The Prince without a Memory" (El Principe Desmemoriado), is taken from Gracian Dantisco's Galateo Español.
We may say of this collection, as of the last, that, although the stories show much humor and skill, they are not among the author's best. He is most at home in the simple pictures of life in the Encartaciones or in the country near Madrid. The latter is the scene of the stories in the volume entitled Rural Tales (Cuentos campesinos), which contains some of the author's most charming productions. They are generally longer than the others—one, "Domestic Happiness" (La Felicidad domestica), filling over ninety-two octavo pages. "Seed-time and Harvest" (Las Siembras y las Cosechas) is a charming story of Pepe and his wife Pepa, the former of whom sows wheat in his fields, and the latter economy, love and virtue by the fireside. The best story of the collection, however—and, to our mind, one of the best that Trueba has written—is the one called "The Style is the Man" (El Estilo es el Hombre), which is so well worth a translation that we will not spoil it by an analysis.
We have said that Trueba's works have been great popular successes. He has endeared himself to all who love poetry and the simple, honest life of the Spanish people. His beloved province has not forgotten him, and in 1862 unanimously elected him archivist and chronicler of Biscay, with a salary of nine hundred dollars a year. The poet henceforth turned his attention to a history of Biscay, which has not yet appeared, though some preliminary studies have been published in a work entitled Chapters of a Book (Capitulos de un Libro). Trueba resided at this period of his life at Bilbao, which he was obliged to leave in haste during the last Carlist war, and he has since lived in Madrid. He has published there several volumes of romances and historical novels, some of which have been very successful; but Trueba's real strength is in his poetry and short stories, which may be favorably compared with the best of this class of literature—with Auerbach's Tales of the Black Forest, for example. The reader is at once attracted to the author, whose personality shines through most of his stories and is always apparent in his poetry. Simple, honest, patriotic, religious, he is a type of the best class of Spaniards—a class that will some day win for their country the respect of other nations and bring back a better glory than that founded on conquest.