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Excerpt from The Court of Charles IV: A Romance of the Escorial I, your humble servant, had neither home nor place in Madrid, neither kin nor possessions, and was wandering through the city, cursing the luckless hour in which I left my native town for the inhospitable capital, when I had recourse to the pages of the "Diario" newspaper in quest of some respectable employment. The paper proved a means of rescue to the hapless Gabriel - destitute, hungry, alone, and despairing - for within three days of having given publicity in type to the superior qualities with which I believed myself gifted by nature, I was taken into the service of an actress at the Theatre "del Principe" Pepita Gonzalez by name, La Gonzalez, This happened in 1805; the episode I am about to narrate did not however occur till two years later, in 1807, when I, if I calculate rightly, was sixteen years old, indeed very nearly seventeen. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
Author
People know Spanish writer Benito Pérez Galdós especially for his Episodios Nacionales (1873-1912), a series of 46 historical novels. Benito Pérez Galdós was a Spanish realist novelist. Some authorities consider him second only to Cervantes in stature as a Spanish novelist. He was the leading literary figure in 19th century Spain. Galdós was a prolific writer, publishing 31 novels, 46 Episodios Nacionales (National Episodes), 23 plays, and the equivalent of 20 volumes of shorter fiction, journalism and other writings. He remains popular in Spain, and galdosistas (Galdós researchers) considered him Spain's equal to Dickens, Balzac and Tolstoy. As recently as 1950, few of his works were available translated to English, although he has slowly become popular in the Anglophone world. While his plays are generally considered to be less successful than his novels, Realidad (1892) is important in the history of realism in the Spanish theatre.
