Juan Valera's ""The Illusions of Doctor Faustino"" (Las ilusiones del doctor Faustino) came out in 1875, one year after the resounding success of his ""Pepita Jimenez"". One of the author's contemporaries, the critic Manuel de la Revilla, considered it among the most important novels of his time and compared it to Flaubert's ""L'Education"" sentimentale on account of the negative influence of Romanticism on the protagonist's character and life.Don Faustino Lopez de Mendoza, scion of an illustrious but impoverished family of the highest nobility, believes himself destined for great accomplishments in the literary world, sees himself as a poet of the first rank, and immerses himself in grand, if not grandiose, illusions.While living in a provincial Andalusian town and dreaming of triumphing in Madrid's artistic circles, Faustino embarks on a discovery of love, anguishes over his impecunious state, and engages in endless self-analysis. Love - or, at all events, a monetarily advantageous marriage - seems to go hand in glove with turning his illusions and dreams into triumphs and realities.He falls for Costanza and is rejected by her; he falls for Maria and she eludes him; he thinks he falls for Rosita then callously scorns her after meeting up again with Maria, who flees from him after a night of lovemaking. Reduced to financial ruin by a revengeful Rosita, Faustino betakes himself to the Spanish capital. Many years later all three women, as well as his daughter Irene (by Maria), converge in Madrid, and how he extricates himself from each relationship and meets his sad end constitutes the denouement of this searching novel that depicts the deleterious effects of the Romantic malaise that swept through western Europe in the early part of the nineteenth century.

The great nineteenth-century Portuguese author Jose Maria Eca de Queiros (1845-1900) has long been known for his novels, especially The Crime of Father Amaro (1880) and The Maias (1888). However, he also wrote short stories, and a number of them, having stood the test of time, are now regarded as masterpieces. Although there is no question that Eca owes the lion's share of his reputation to his long fiction, the tales in this collection tell us that we are reading the work of a writer in full control of both genres. The eleven selections range widely in theme and length and, except for "The Catastrophe"(which was published posthumously), are arranged in order of the year of publication. "The Falling Snow" and "Master Devil" contain elements of both the fantastic and realistic, a number of which call to mind Edgar Allan Poe, a writer whom Eca read and greatly admired. The power of love becomes the obsession of love in "The Peculiarities of a Blonde Girl" and "Jose Matias," two of the stories that stand at the pinnacle of Eca's reputation as a short story writer. "Civilization" will speak to nostalgia for a rustic life, while "Perfection" searches, through Ulysses and a special goddess, into a different kind of life, one without blemish. Other tales explore the nature of sacrifice ("The Wet Nurse"), greed and betrayal ("The Treasure"), jealousy and vengeance ("The Dead Man"), and faith in a young rabbi named Jesus ("The Gentle Miracle"). No one knows why Eca withheld publication of "The Catastrophe," but this powerful story engages us with its naked intensity, its aroused passion, and its blunt honesty, for it amounts to a ringing endorsement of the exalted meaning of patriotism.