Thus, then, his new book, _Suprema Ley_, surprised me agreeably, constituted a revelation,--of a truthfulness so admirable, so vivid, so passional, so full of that well-founded realism, which does not permit a book to remain on the shelf of the bookseller, but places it upon the table of the reader and in the memory of the lover of the beautiful. If one did not see, at the close of the volume, the dates on which it was begun and concluded, he might believe that it had sprung forth complete, a spontaneous improvisation, a work of the instant, in which neither art, nor trammels of execution, nor imperfections of detail had had a part. In the novel there is not a needless character, nor a useless incident, nor a single page which does not contribute to the completing of the action and which has not a direct relation to the plot. Even the descriptions, in which our novelists are prodigal to the degree of piling them up indiscriminately, are in _Suprema Ley_, only different modes in which the subject is impressed by reality. In Gamboa’s work, Belen, the Theatre, the Alameda--especially the Alameda--perform the part of the chorus in Greek tragedy. The characters are enchantingly real, to the degree that, after reading the book, we feel that we have encountered, seen, and spoken with the actors. Ortegal is a degenerate, whom we all know; Clothilde is a fallen woman with a mask of sanctity, a profligate, who entered the world for man’s undoing; Berón, Holas, even the Comendador and Don Francisco are the very breath of life, are full of enchanting and noble realism. One given to seek similarity between the old and the new would claim a likeness between Dr. Pascual, the learned man of the Rongón Macquart and the poor court writer, between Clothilde of Zola and the Clothilde of Gamboa, between the first night which the lovers spent united and the first night of Laurent and Therese Raquin, between the servant whose type Gamboa barely sketches and the Juliana Conseira de Eça of Quieros. These similarities may or may not exist, but no charge can be made against Gamboa on account of them; he painted reality and the other novelists painted reality, and nothing resembles itself more closely than truth. Gamboa does not possess what I will call the epic faculty, that is, the faculty of describing external nature, as Delgado for instance; as little does he have, as Campo, the privilege of retaining, in memory, phrases and gestures; nor does he possess a vein of humor, as these writers and as Cuellar; he is, before all and beyond all, an analyst, a dissector of souls who sees to the bottom of hearts, who seeks the lust that dishonors, the meanness that kills, the hatred that causes horror. For this reason, in my opinion, he will never be popular, while his luckier fellows will gain proselytes and friends as long as they write.