[109] Indeed, in reading the more recent novels by Señora Pardo Bazán, “La Quimera,” or “La Sirena Negra,” or “Dulce Dueño” (1911), striking and original as they are, one cannot help looking back from them somewhat regretfully to her Galician novels of the eighties. [110] “Le trait essentiel du réalisme de Pereda c’est la sympathie avec laquelle il décrit les mœurs populaires, sans optimisme outré, mais avec une divination profonde de leur poésie intime. Pereda aime le peuple par tempérament d’artiste, pour ce que celui-ci a de pittoresque et d’original; il l’aime aussi en homme et en chrétien, comme une humanité plus simple, aux sentiments spontanés et naïfs. Il ne nous dissimule pas sa grossièreté et ses misères mais il nous ouvre les yeux sur ses vertus ignorées; jusque chez les êtres dégradés par le vice, il nous montre quelque noble instinct qui survit et se réveille à l’occasion. Et ce réalisme, qu’illumine toujours un rayon d’idéal, respecte l’homme en le peignant même dans ses vulgarités ou ses laideurs.” Boris de Tannenberg. L’Espagne littéraire. Paris, 1903. [111] The country between Burgos and the Atlantic, known as the “_Montaña_” with Santander for its capital, is a district of continuous mountains and hills and steep meadows and maize-fields, with scarcely an inch of level ground. The hills far up are covered with chestnut and oak, beech, walnut and sycamore; rushing streams are hidden in deep wooded clefts, and rough walls of stones divide field from field, where the reapers, with difficulty wielding their scythes, have but a precipitous foothold. The villages and scattered farms are of massive yellow stone, with roofs of deep-brown tiles and wide balconies suspended by grey wooden posts from the projecting eaves. [112] Even so, however, the clear splendour of the sky of Castille must have cast a charm over the place. The dominant impression at Madrid to-day is, indeed, that of light and of open spaces, the Puerta del Sol in a radiance of sunshine, the Carrera de San Jeronymo going off apparently into space, the surrounding country far-seen and treeless, the clear blue mountains, and the sky from verge to zenith clothed with a brilliance of dazzling light so that “ogni parte ad ogni parte splende.” [113] “La Montálvez” (1888) and “Nubes de Estío” (1891) are perhaps his weakest works. “Nubes de Estío” is rather wearisome till the Duque de Cañaveral arrives, “falling like a Jupiter among little gods.” “Al Primer Vuelo” (1890) is a novel of the Cantabrian coast, but without the full salt and vigour of “Sotileza.” [114] M. Boris de Tannenberg speaks of “l’âpre saveur de sa langue, un peu rude et fruste, mais solide, musclée et haute en couleur.”