It is in a minute chiselling of details that lies Señor Valle-Inclán’s strength. The snails in the garden, the shape of the glasses, the silver chains of a hanging-lamp--nothing is passed over as insignificant. But the details are given in few words, with the clear precision of a skilled craftsman. And he has the power to set his characters in strong relief. Thus in “Sonata de Otoño” we have that _muy gran señor_ Don Juan Manuel, who on his first appearance hurries away “to Villa del Prior, to thrash a clerk.” It is his custom to ride over from his country-house, his _Pazo_, two leagues away, tie his horse to the Palacio garden-gate, enter and call to a servant for wine--for that excellent _vino de la Fontela_ which would be the best in the world, he says, if pressed from selected grapes--drink and fall asleep, and then waking up call loudly for his horse, whether it chances to be night or day, and ride back to his _Pazo_. There is a glimpse of the mother of Concha, who would tell the children stories of the saints, and with “mystic, noble fingers” slowly turn the pages to show them the pictures of the Christian Year; of the mother of Xavier, who would pass her days in the recess of a wide balcony spinning for her servants, in a chair of crimson velvet studded with silver nails. There is thin, white Concha, so saintly and so frail; there is Xavier, Marqués de Bradomín, himself, the gallant, cynical sceptic; there is the page Florisel, the old servant Candelaria, with their rare and far-sought names.