and motive are
understood and appreciated, although his stories are apparently so often
anti-Catholic.

I

Dona Perfecta is, first of all, a story, and a great story, but it is
certainly also a story that must appear at times potently, and even
bitterly, anti-Catholic. Yet it would be a pity and an error to read it
with the preoccupation that it was an anti-Catholic tract, for really it
is not that. If the persons were changed in name and place, and
modified in passion to fit a cooler air, it might equally seem an
anti-Presbyterian or anti-Baptist tract; for what it shows in the light
of their own hatefulness and cruelty are perversions of any religion,
any creed. It is not, however, a tract at all; it deals in artistic
largeness with the passion of bigotry, as it deals with the passion of
love, the passion of ambition, the passion of revenge. But Galdos
is Spanish and Catholic, and for him the bigotry wears a Spanish and
Catholic face. That is all.

Up to a certain time, I believe, Galdos wrote romantic or idealistic
novels, and one of these I have read, and it tired me very much. It was
called "Marianela," and it surprised me the more because I was already
acquainted with his later work, which is all realistic. But one does not
turn realist in a single night, and although the change in Galdos was
rapid it was not quite a lightning change; perhaps because it was
not merely an outward change, but artistically a change of heart. His
acceptance in his quality of realist was much more instant than his
conversion, and vastly wider; for we are told by the critic whom I have
been quoting that Galdos's earlier efforts, which he called _Episodios
Nacionales_, never had the vogue which his realistic novels have
enjoyed.

These were, indeed, tendencious, if I may Anglicize a very necessary
word from the Spanish _tendencioso_. That is, they dealt with very
obvious problems, and had very distinct and poignant significations,
at least in the case of "Dona Perfecta," "Leon Roch," and "Gloria." In
still later novels, Emilia Pardo-Bazan thinks, he has comprehended that
"the novel of to-day must take note of the ambient truth, and realize
the beautiful with freedom and independence." This valiant lady, in
the campaign for realism which she made under the title of "La Cuestion
Palpitante"--one of the best and strongest books on the subject--counts
him first among Spanish realists, as Clarin counts him first among
Spanish novelist