21-23. =querían... valiéranse=; this combination of tenses is unusual.
We do not have here a contrary to fact condition, as might at
first appear. If that were the case, the imperfect indicative could
not be employed in the if-clause. This is a simple condition in
past time, the irregularity being in the use of =valiéranse=, an
archaic way of expressing a sort of imperative,--_debieron valerse_,
or _válganse_. Translate, _since they wished... they should have employed_.
23. =valiéranse de otros de mi oficio=; earlier in his life Galdós
was inclined to deal harshly with members of the priesthood
of the type to which he alludes here, but the agreeable figure of
Don Rafael reveals the writer's growing sympathy for the clergy.
88-89. =la que se le viene encima=, _what he's in for_; _la_ is the
neuter feminine; see note to II, 86.
265. =que=, _and_. See Ramsey, _Text-book of Modern Spanish_,
§ 1421.
314. =Yo soy estoico, y no temo ningún castigo.= The philosophy
of stoicism is especially attractive to Galdós, and he
plays with it in several of his works. Thus, Orozco, of _Realidad_,
strives to attain stoic perfection; and the chief characters of
other plays sometimes act like stoics (Paternoy, _Los condenados_,
II, 14; Pantoja, _Electra_, IV, 10; Berenguer, _La fiera_, III, 5).
That the stoicism of Seneca (a Spaniard) is the fundamental
trait of Spanish character, is the contention brilliantly set forth
by Ángel Ganivet in the first dozen pages of his _Idearium español_.
325. =un arma=; the feminine indefinite article is by some
writers changed to _un_ under the same conditions in which _la_
becomes _el_. Cf. =un hacha= in line 333.