for her mother, Dona
Perfecta. She is ready to fly with him, and yet she betrays him to her
mother's pitiless hate.

But it is Dona Perfecta herself who is the transcendent figure, the
most powerful creation of the book. In her, bigotry and its fellow-vice,
hypocrisy, have done their perfect work, until she comes near to being
a devil, and really does some devil's deeds. Yet even she is not without
some extenuating traits. Her bigotry springs from her conscience, and
she is truly devoted to her daughter's eternal welfare; she is of such
a native frankness that at a certain point she tears aside her mask of
dissimulation and lets Pepe see all the ugliness of her perverted soul.
She is wonderfully managed. At what moment does she begin to hate him,
and to wish to undo her own work in making a match between him and
her daughter? I could defy anyone to say. All one knows is that at one
moment she adores her brother's son, and at another she abhors him, and
has already subtly entered upon her efforts to thwart the affection she
has invited in him for her daughter.

Caballuco, what shall I say of Caballuco? He seems altogether bad, but
the author lets one imagine that this cruel, this ruthless brute must
have somewhere about him traits of lovableness, of leniency, though
he never lets one see them. His gratitude to Dona Perfecta, even his
murderous devotion, is not altogether bad; and he is certainly worse
than nature made him, when wrought upon by her fury and the suggestion
of Don Inocencio. The scene where they work him up to rebellion and
assassination is a compendium of the history of intolerance; as the
mean little conceited city of Orbajosas is the microcosm of bigoted and
reactionary Spain.

IV

I have called, or half-called, this book tendencious; but in a certain
larger view it is not so. It is the eternal interest of passion working
upon passion, not the temporary interest of condition antagonizing
condition, which renders "Dona Perfecta" so poignantly interesting, and
which makes its tragedy immense. But there is hope as well as despair in
such a tragedy. There is the strange support of a bereavement in it,
the consolation of feeling that for those who have suffered unto death,
nothing can harm them more; that even for those who have inflicted their
suffering this peace will soon come.

"Is Perez Galdos a pessimist?" asks the critic Clarin. "No, certainly;
but if he is not, why does he paint us sorrows tha