"Don Faustino Lopez de Mendoza, scion of an illustrious but impoverished family of the highest nobility, believes himself destined for great accomplishments in

Content with her tertuha, or gathering of close friends, her devotions, her books, and her daily routine, Dona Luz is unmoved by the prospect of marriage, becau

"The story of Dan Fadrique Lopez de Mendoza, a man of seafaring adventures and a deist in the mould of the eighteenth-century philosophes, and Dona Blanca Rolda

Juan Valera y Alcalá-Galiano (1824-1905), one of nineteenth-century Spain's most respected authors, lived an international life-a career in the diplomatic serv