In “Flor de Santidad,” perhaps the best of Señor Valle-Inclán’s books, we have the same delicate descriptions of Galicia--the sinister inn, solitary in a gloomy brown Sierra; the shepherdess, keeping her flock and seeing mystic visions among the Celtic stones, yellowed with ancient lichens, _líquenes milenarios_; the simple greeting of the peasants: _Alabado sea Dios_, “Glory be to God”; pilgrims and witches; charms and magical incantations to preserve the flocks from evil; cunning and simplicity, superstition and crime. The same charm of mystical simplicity and innocence that surrounds Adega, the girl shepherdess of “Flor de Santidad,” surrounds all the heroines of Señor Valle-Inclán’s novels; Maximina, for instance, of the sorrowful, velvet eyes, _ojos aterciopelados y tristes_, in “Sonata de Invierno.” It is in “Flor de Santidad” that occurs the picture, repeated in “Jardín Novelesco,” of the old peasant woman going with her little grandson to find him a master. They meet the Archpriest of Lestrove, who is riding leisurely--_de andadura mansa y doctoral_--to preach at a village festival. “May God give us a holy and good day.” The Archpriest draws in his mare. “Are you going to the fair?” he asks. “The poor have nothing to do at the fair. We are going to look for a master for the boy.” “And does he know his catechism?” “Yes, Señor, he knows it. Poverty does not prevent from being a Christian.” The grandmother leaves the nine-year-old child in the service of a blind beggar. “To be the servant of a blind man is a position many would like to have,” says the beggar, and the new _Lazarillo_ answers sorrowfully, “Sí, Señor, sí.” As she watches them go slowly away along the road through the wet green country, she murmurs, drying her tears: “Nine years old and already earning the bread he eats. Glory be to God.”
Incidents and characters are thrown into the relief given by the peculiar and original magic of Señor Valle-Inclán’s delicately chiselled prose. There is in this prose something icily fresh, something of lilacs and hydrangeas, vague reminiscences of the silver tinkling of voices in a glass-roofed market, or of the swish of a scythe in wet grass. The words are cunningly weighed and chosen and set as _gouttes d’argent d’orfévrerie_. And the transparent freshness of his style is admirably suited to describe the primitive simplicity and freshness of Galicia.