lliation or amputation, fully convinced that the
reader will not find anything in this novel objectionable or offensive
to his moral sense. Morality is not to be found in words but in deeds
and in the lessons which these deeds teach.

The difficulty of adequately translating the word _maja_ into English
led to the adoption of "Woman Triumphant" as the title of the present
version. I believe it is a happy selection; it interprets the spirit of
the novel. But it must be borne in mind that the woman here is the wife
of the protagonist. It is the wife who triumphs, resurrecting in spirit
to exert an overwhelming influence over the life of a man who had wished
to live without her.

Renovales, the hero, is simply the personification of human desire, this
poor desire which, in reality, does not know what it wants, eternally
fickle and unsatisfied. When we finally obtain what we desire, it does
not seem enough. "More: I want more," we say. If we lose something that
made life unbearable, we immediately wish it back as indispensable to
our happiness. Such are we: poor deluded children who cried yesterday
for what we scorn to-day and shall want again to-morrow; poor deluded
beings plunging across the span of life on the Icarian wings of caprice.

VICENTE BLASCO IBANEZ.

New York, January, 1920.

WOMAN TRIUMPHANT

PART I

I

It was eleven o'clock in the morning when Mariano Renovales reached the
Museo del Prado. Several years had passed since the famous painter had
entered it. The dead did not attract him; very interesting they were,
very worthy of respect, under the glorious shroud of the centuries, but
art was moving along new paths and he could not study there under the
false glare of the skylights, where he saw reality only through the
temperaments of other men. A bit of sea, a mountainside, a group of
ragged people, an expressive head attracted him more than that palace,
with its broad staircases, its white columns and its statues of bronze
and alabaster--a solemn pantheon of art, where the neophytes vacillated
in fruitless confusion, without knowing what course to follow.

The master Renovales stopped for a few moments at the foot of the
stairway. He contemplated the valley through which you approach the
palace--with its slopes of fresh turf, dotted at intervals with the
sickly little trees--with a certain emotion, as men are wont to
contemplate, after