287 desheredada). After getting through university and revealing a total absence of any practical ambition, Juanito temporarily develops a taste for lower-class clothes and speech that suggests to his mother that he is philandering in the poorer parts of Madrid. She attempts to put a stop to these adventures by arranging a suitable marriage to a cousin belonging to another family in the textile trade. Juanito drifts into this marriage with the well-bred and charming Jacinta but, in the course of their honeymoon, he is unable to resist Jacinta‘s persistent inquiries about his affair with a lower-class girl, Fortunata, and reveals that he abandoned her when she was pregnant with his child. In a rare moment of drunken candor, he admits the cruelty of his class, ―los señoritos somos unos miserables, creemos que el honor de las hijas del pueblo es cosa de juego‖ (Fortunata I, 229). As a recurring topic of discussion, Fortunata becomes an unseen, third presence throughout their honeymoon.436
The newly-weds settle into the Santa Cruz household for the next two years with every sign of being content though Jacinta becomes obsessed with her failure to conceive a child. Juanito‘s attentions begin to stray such that, by the time of Amadeus‘ renunciation of the throne in 1873, Jacinta becomes aware of his unfaithfulness and extracts from him promises of reform and fidelity. On the basis of information provided by the unreliable fabulista, Ido de Sagrario, she goes in search of the supposed child of Juanito and Fortunata only to discover that the trail has been a false one, and that the real son of Juanito has died.
Against the political background of the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy, a fall from grace of the ideals of the Revolution in the view of Galdós, Juanito also falls unseen presence: Caudet observes, ―la que será la verdadera protagonista del viaje: Fortunata.‖ (Fortunata I, 203, n. 158) 436