101
Obras completas, V, 563.
102
Obras completas, V, 651.
103
Germán Bleiberg, ed., Diccionario de historia de España, 2nd ed. (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1968), II, 1088.
104
Diccionario, I, 588.
105
Villaamil's unemployments were for four, eleven, three and a half, and five months; the last one was between September, 1868 and March, 1869 (563, 590).
106
See: Obras completas, V, 652.; Diccionario, II, 1063-64.
107
Obras completas, V, 676; Diccionario, II, 221.
108
For example, see: Obras completas, V, 657-58.
109
In an earlier draft of this paper, I advanced the thesis of a latent incestuous desire of Villaamil toward Abelarda. His profound grief and separation from the family would then be guilt reactions. I decided to excise this argument from my interpretation after several readers agreed in finding little basis in the text for my contention. Such a thesis, I now believe, is reductionist and, in absence of textual substantiation not found by me, would constitute a good example of invalid use of psychoanalytic theory in literary criticism.
110
These speculations are made difficult by apparent inconsistencies in the fictive chronology. In 1876 while the family fived in Chamberí, Víctor «pasó algunos meses con la familia» and first began to toy with Abelarda (594, 596). Luisito's memory of his father is of a time when Villaamil is supposed to have been in Cuba and on a day when the «Miaus», especially Abelarda, were engaged in a violent argument with Víctor (578). But, the last time Villaamil was in Cuba was during the second half of 1873 and the first days of 1874 (these dates are arrived at by noting the historical references in the text, secking the dates in Bleiberg's Diccionario, collating this material with the fictive chronology). Since Luis also recalls that the family was living somewhere else than they do in the present time of the novel, we are forced to choose between 1873 and 1876 as the time of his memories. Yet, he would have only been four or five in late 1873 and early 1874. How good would his memory have been of events at the earlier period? Nonetheless, it seems important that Villaamil, as discussed on pages eighty seven and eighty eight, not have previous knowledge of relations between Víctor and Abelarda, that the «escándalo y reyerta» recalled by Luis not be of 1876, but of 1873-74 when Villaamil was absent from the family.