283 (Heredia Soriano) provides grounds for hope. With this anticipation, the twins Belisario and César Miquis at the end of this novel provide a hopeful outlook for Spain‘s future.
In the novel of the next chapter, Fortunata y Jacinta, which is a much more complex and ambiguous work, another heroine‘s child also points toward Spain‘s future, but with much less confidence. Processes seen as degenerative will be seen at work distributed more widely in the common people, the pueblo, and in the lower middle-class as well as in the alta burguesía. Galdós‘s faith in the middle-class is even more qualified and he tentatively espouses a faith in the regenerative energy from a different level of society, the despised and feared but potentially vigor-infusing pueblo embodied in the character of Fortunata.
Chapter 6: Fortunata y Jacinta
Tuberculosis is the disease of romanticism, while that of naturalism is syphilis