Translations attest to the popularity of Diderot in Spain. The Entretiens appeared in Madrid in 1788, translated by Bernardo María de Calzada. Le Fils naturel and Le Père de famille also found their way into Spanish in the same period, the latter three times. See Diderot, Œuvres, VII, 10; Menéndez y Pelayo, Heterodoxos, III, 242, 251; Sempere y Guarinos, VI, 231-32:
Cf. these doleful utterances of Dorval's: «CONSTANCE. Si cela est, vous revenez sans doute. DORVAL. Je ne sais... Ai-je jamais su ce que je deviendrais?» (I.iv); «Je traîne partout l'infortune» (II.v). Compare with El delincuente honrado, I.iii, 84b, and I.vi, 86a.
See Berkowitz and Wofsy, p. xxiii.
Michel-Jean Sedaine, Le Philosophe sans le savoir, III.viii. References to this play are based on Eighteenth-century French Plays, ed. Clarence D. Brenner and Nolan A. Goodyear (New York, 1927).
It should be noted that Don Justo later recommends, the ancient laws of Spain as less barbarous in this regard, since they correspond to accepted values. His condemnation of the new law rests on its failing to take account of the unchanged popular attitude (IV.vi, 95a-b).
Valchrétien (BAE, XLVI, 78) and Ticknor (III, 324, n. 12) find no connection between the two plays; neither does Somoza, who erroneously attributes the French play to Mercier (p. 60). Paul Lacroix (Le Bibliophile Jacob) writes of El delincuente: «C'est une imitation fort libre de l'Honnête criminel, drame de Fenouillot de Falbaire de Quingey. La pièce espagnole ne conserve guère de ce drame que le fond du sujet; elle a été traduite en français par l'abbé Meylar [sic for d'Eymar, i. e., the abbé de Valchrétien]» (Catalogue de la Bibliothèque dramatique de M. de Soleinne [Paris, 1843-45], IV, 173, No. 4851). Lacroix does not list the French translation, of which perhaps he was aware only through the letters prefaced to the 1787 ed.
Gaiffe (p. 568) also lists an anonymous Honnête Voleur, ou Les Cruels Effets de la nécessité. One may conclude that these paradoxical titles, representing suffering virtue, appealed to the sensibilities of a period which was beginning to take a sympathetic interest in all manner of pariahs and to stress the importance of environment in their behavior. This does not preclude the possibility of a direct adaptation by Jovellanos of the French title of Falbaire.
Somoza speaks of El Desertor, whose author he does not mention, as having «alguna relación», but declares it to be «de escaso mérito» (p. 60). See also Sempere y Guarinos, III, 135.
Sébastien Mercier, Le Déserteur (Geneva, 1772), I.iv.
Ibid., III.vi. Cf. El delincuente, II.viii, 88b.