Benito Pérez Galdós has long been considered the Spanish Tolstoy; however, unlike those of his Russian counterpart, few of his works are available in English—and fewer still are the subjects of serious literary scholarship. This book approaches one of the author’s most memorable characters, Madrid moneylender Francisco Torquemada, and considers the extent to which notions of profit, efficiency, and utility inform the Torquemada series—juxtaposing nineteenth-century understandings of waste and profit with contemporary economic ideas in order to better comprehend the writer and his world.