Fortunata and Jacinta III

Fortunata and Jacinta belongs to the cycle of “Contemporary Spanish Novels” and is the masterpiece of Benito Pérez Galdós. The plot describes the “Galdosian Madrid”. This is stated by Leopoldo Alas (Clarín) and Pedro Ortiz-Armengol, one of Galdós’ biographers. The events take place between December 1869 and April 1876 and dissect the socio-political environment after the last days of the Revolution of 1868, the Reign of Amadeo I of Spain, the First Spanish Republic, the military coups of Generals Pavia and Martínez Campos, and the Restoration.
In this third part the Dauphin returns to the fold; Fortunata, disheartened, approaches the old Evaristo Feijoo, and this, in a perfect carom, reconciles her with Maximilian.

Juan Pablo Rubín could not live without spending half of the hours of the day or almost all of them in the café. His nature being molded to this kind of life, he would have been considered unhappy if work or occupations forced him to live differently. He was a relentless and recidivist killer of time, and the only joy of his soul was to see how the hours expired gasping, and how the periods of annoyance were falling so as not to get up again. He would go to the café at noon, after lunch, and stay until four or five. He returned after lunch, around eight o’clock, and did not leave until more than midnight or until dawn, as the case may be. As his friends were not so constant, he spent some time alone, meditating on serious problems of politics, religion or philosophy, contemplating with uncertain and sleepiness to look at the plasters of Scotland, the smoked paintings of the ceiling, the iron shafts and the golden half-shacks. That enclosure and that atmosphere were so necessary to life, by the effect of custom, that only there was felt in the fullness of his faculties. Even his memory was missing outside the café, and as he sometimes suddenly forgot names or important facts in the street, he did not get impatient to remember, and said very calmly: “In the café I will remember”. Indeed, as soon as he took a seat on the couch, the stimulating influence of the place was felt in his body. Wounded smell and sight, soon the spiritual faculties were awakened, the memory was refreshed and the understanding was denumb. The coffee provided him with the intimate sensations that are typical of the domestic home, and when he entered all the objects smiled at him, as if they were his own. The people he saw there constantly, the waiters and the manager, certain fixed parishioners, were represented to him as closely united to him by family ties. Even with the humpback that sold matches and newspapers at the door he had a certain spiritual kinship.