At the moment Moratin was making arrangements for bringing out “The Baron,” he was occupied with the careful preparation of another comedy in verse, that was destined still further to increase his reputation. This was “The Female Hypocrite,” which was written as early as 1791, and was soon afterwards represented in private, but which was not finished and acted publicly till 1804. It is an excellent specimen of character-drawing; the two principal personages being a girl, made, by the severity of her family, to assume the appearance of being very religious, while her cousin, who is well contrasted with her, is rendered frank and winning by an opposite treatment. The very subject, however, was one that brought Moratin upon dangerous ground, and his play was forbidden by the Inquisition. But that once formidable body was now little more than an engine of state; so that the authority of the Prince of the Peace was not only sufficient to prevent any disagreeable consequences to Moratin himself, but was able soon afterwards to indulge the public in a pleasure for which they were only the more eager, because it had for a time been interdicted. Moratin’s last original effort on the stage was a full-length prose comedy in three acts, which he called the “Little Girl’s Consent,” and which was acted in 1806. Its general movement is extremely natural, and yet it is enlivened with a little of the intrigue and bustle that were always so much liked on the Spanish theatre. A young girl, while in the course of her education at a convent, becomes attached to a handsome officer of dragoons. Her mother, ignorant of this, undertakes to bring her home and marry her to an excellent, benevolent old gentleman, whom the daughter has never seen, but whom, out of mere weakness, she has been unable to refuse. At an inn on the road, where the younger lover falls in with them on purpose to break up this match, they all meet; and he discovers, to his dismay, that his rival is an uncle to whom he is sincerely attached, and to whom he owes many obligations. The mistakes and intrigues of the night they pass together at this inn give great life to the action, and are full of humor; while the disinterested attachment of the young lovers to each other, and the benevolence of the uncle, add to the conflicting claims and relations of the different parties a charm quite original in itself, and very effective in its exhibition. The play ends by the discovery of the real state of the daughter’s heart, and the renunciation of all the pretensions of the uncle, who makes his nephew his heir. Nothing on the Spanish stage had been so well received for a long period. It was acted twenty-six nights successively to audiences who were in the habit of demanding novelties constantly; and then it was stopped only because Lent came to shut up the theatres. No criticism appeared except to praise it. The triumph of Moratin was complete.