Une nouvelle espagnole

Le Coffre et le revenant has excited less enthusiasm than ­Stendhal’s other brief narratives. It is easy to see in it an assortment of Romantic clichés about Spain and perhaps also the influence of Cervantes. Yet the interest of this novella is of a different order: the character of Don Blas has a singular depth which facilitates the denunciation of the mechanisms of power and tyranny and their ­contradictions. It is perhaps this political dimension which makes the novella interesting to us.