am certainly ready to submit when he goes on to say that Galdos is not
a social or literary insurgent; that he has no political or religious
prejudices; that he shuns extremes, and is charmed with prudence;
that his novels do not attack the Catholic dogmas--though they deal so
severely with Catholic bigotry--but the customs and ideas cherished
by secular fanaticism to the injury of the Church. Because this is
so evident, our critic holds, his novels are "found in the bosom of
families in every corner of Spain." Their popularity among all classes
in Catholic and prejudiced Spain, and not among free-thinking students
merely, bears testimony to the fact that his aim 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.