It is a tragedy such as naturalism alone can stage and give the effect of life.

I have read few things so touching as this tale of commonest experience which seems as true to the suffering and defeat of the newcomers, as to the stupid inhumanity of the neighbors who join, under the lead of the evillest among them, in driving the strangers away; in fact I know nothing parallel to it, certainly nothing in English; perhaps _The House with the Green Shutters_ breathes as great an anguish.
At just what interval or remove the novel which gave Ibanez worldwide reputation followed this little tale, I cannot say, and it is not important that I should try to say.

But it is worth while to note here that he never flatters the vices or even the swoier virtues of his countrymen; and it is much to their honor that they have accepted him in the love of his art for the sincerity of his dealing with their conditions.

In _Sangre y Arena_ his affair is with the cherished atrocity which keeps the Spaniards in the era of the gladiator shows of Rome.

The hero, as the renowned _torrero_ whose career it celebrates, from his first boyish longing to be a bull-fighter, to his death, weakened by years and wounds, in the arena of Madrid, is something absolute in characterization.