El Sombrero De Tres Picos

EL SOMBRERO DE TRES PICOS (The Cocked Hat). The journalist and novel ist Pedro Antonio de Alarcon (183341) met with little acclaim for his more ambitious liter ary performances; in fact, he attained to no measure of success in his novels. With his short stories, however, he gained a well deserved repute, and with two of them, the on the other hand, is the result of his refashioning sin old narrative previously decked out in prose form by the Italian Boccaccio in his (De cameron> (VIII, 8) and refurbished for French readers in the (Cent nouvelles nouvelles.' Alar con may have known these versions of the story, but he certainly derived his direct in spiration from the treatment accorded to it in two popular Spanish ballads which may be seen in the

brero de Tres Picos' is one which required delicate handling if the unduly scabrous was to be avoided in the telling. It would have been easy for any author to run aground on the shoals of what the literary critics now call naturalism in the treatment of a theme which, like this, involves attempted adultery as a neces sary element But there is no indulgence shown here for the vicious; and whatsoever elements of the unbecoming are inherent in the popular tradition and are perforce adopted in Alarcon's story are sufficiently countered by the firm way in which the Corregidora, safeguarding her own honor and rescuing that of the peasant woman sefia Frasquita, dispenses poetic justice to her own recreant husband. Humor of incident is rife in the work. It may be noted that Alar con's redaction of the old legend has been utilized for operatic purposes in both French and German.

J. D. M. Foan.