The journey from Burgos to Madrid takes ten hours by the express. There is only one good train a day to anywhere in Spain. When it doesn’t start at eight at night it starts at eight in the morning. This is a dreadful nuisance to people who object equally to travelling all night and to getting up at six in the morning. All trains, except the one express, are fearfully slow. You can take twenty-two hours to do a hundred miles on some of the lines.

The Spaniards have a couplet which runs thus:—‘El aire de Madrid es tan sotil Que mata À un hombre y no apaga un candil.’ This, in plain English, means that the subtle air of Madrid, which won’t extinguish a candle, will put out a man’s life. For two or three days in Madrid I was up in the stirrups. I think I have been ill in all the principal towns of the United Kingdom and the Continent; but in Madrid, for the first time for many years, I felt absolutely well. The dry, exhilarating air suited me admirably. I did an endless round of sightseeing by day, I went to three or four theatres at night, and I stopped in the magnificent cafÉs until the waiters began to pile the chairs on the tables and put on their hats and cloaks to go home to their families. And when I got back to my hotel I sat up in my room and wrote till the small hours. With all this exertion, I was able to get up early the next morning, with a beautiful complexion and a perfect temper.

But with my first bull-fight a change came o’er the spirit of my dream. On Sunday all Madrid crowded to the great open arena, ‘La Plaza de Toros.’ On Monday all Madrid was coughing and sneezing, and I outcoughed and outsneezed them all. The stone seats of the bull-ring and the boxes open to all the winds of heaven are dear to the hearts of doctors and undertakers. The sun beats down upon an excited multitude, and it is not till nearly sunset that the last bull dies. Then out the great populace pours, and takes a chill at the most dangerous hour of the day. I caught a champion cold at the bull-fight, and it was no consolation to me that everywhere I went during the next two or three days there was a chorus of coughs, and that all my neighbours were as miserable as myself. At the theatre on Monday evening the play I witnessed was absolutely performed in dumb show. The actors strove in vain to make themselves audible over the perpetual hacking and barking of an audience in the agonies of asthma, the inconveniences of influenza, the convulsions of catarrh, and the breath-battle of bronchitis.

The arrangements at Spanish theatrical performances are unique. They must be seen to be believed. But before I come to the theatres I have to get through the bull-fight, and before I come to the bull-fight I should like to say a word or two about the illustrious gentlemen who get their living by it, and who are commonly called toreros. This term includes the espadas, the picadors, and the banderilleros, whose various parts in the performance will presently be made clear to you.

The profession of bull-fighter is in Spain the royal road to fortune. There are half a dozen men, not yet middle-aged, who have become millionaires by killing bulls, and their names are idolized wherever the Spanish language is spoken. Their society is courted by the highest nobles in the land, and they are au mieux with many a fair and aristocratic dame. The leading matadors ('espadas’ is the technical name) receive for a single afternoon’s show sums varying from £200 to £500. They star in the provinces on sharing terms, and when you take into account the fact that a good ‘house’ at a bull-fight means between two and three thousand pounds, you can imagine what these starring engagements are worth. After they have conquered Spain they go to South America, and there some of them make sums which would cause even Sir Henry Irving and Madame Sarah Bernhardt to open their eyes to their fullest extent.

Mazzantini, who at the time of my visit was starring in Havannah, was the idol of the hour. Long telegrams were published in the principal Spanish papers announcing his magnificent receptions, and describing in ‘the language of the ring’ his feats with the bulls. Some time ago Mazzantini, who as a bull-fighter makes £20,000 a year, was a porter on the Great Northern Railway of Spain. He was strong and handsome and full of pluck, and he said to himself, ‘I want to make money. In Spain there are only two ways—to be a tenor or a bull-fighter. I can’t sing, but I know I could kill a bull.’ He began as one of the gang of assistants at small shows; he soon acquired skill, and to-day whenever he travels his is a royal progress; his diamonds are the envy of prima donnas, he has his town mansion and his shooting-box and his villa at the seaside, and the reigning belles of Society send him love-letters. Frascuelo, who has now retired, being rich beyond the dreams of avarice, was nearly being made a marquis by King Amadeus.

To read of these riches and honours, to see the receptions given to these princes of the ring by all grades of society, you would think that a bull-fight was a magnificent spectacle, and the matadors were men of splendid bravery and consummate skill.

You had better sit a Corrida de Toros out with me from beginning to end, and then you will be able to form your own judgment. There is one thing, however, you must do first, and that is, get rid entirely of your English views with regard to cruelty to animals. You will see plenty of that; but if you argue with a Spaniard about it he will tell you that you are quite as cruel to animals, only in another way, in England. You will reply that in your sports where the death of an animal is involved the animal has ‘a chance.’ In bull-fighting the animals have none.

But if you are wise, you will not argue at all. You will take a bull-fight as it is, and come away thankful that it is not the national sport of England. There have been many attempts to revive it in the South of France, and the French would, I fancy, take kindly to it, if it were once made legal, and could be carried out with all the pomp and splendour of Spain.

All Englishmen do not dislike bull-fighting. Many Englishmen who live in Spain follow it enthusiastically; and a young Irish gentleman of fortune at one time took to the bull-ring professionally, and attained a certain amount of distinction.

Madrid is covered with red bills announcing a bull-fight for Sunday. The bills are curious reading and interesting to the student of the language of Cervantes. Here is one of them:

PLAZA DE TOROS DE MADRID
———
CORRIDA EXTRAORDINARIA
QUE SE VERIFICARÁ (SI EL TIEMPO NO LO IMPIDE)
EL DOMINGO 6 DE MARZO DE 1887
——
PRESIDIRÀ LA PLAZA LA AUTORIDAD COMPETENTE
—
ORDEN DE LA FUNCIÓN

1.º CUATRO TOROS de puntas, defectuosos, de las ganaderÍas y con las divisas siguientes: DOS, con azul turquÍ, de la acreditada de Don Manuel BaÑuelos y Salcedo, de Colmenar Viejo, y DOS, con blanca, de la de Don Alejandro Arroyo (antes Mazpule), de Miraflores de la Sierra.

LIDIADORES

ESPADAS
Rafael Guerra (Guerrita), de CÓrdoba
Julio Aparici (Fabrilo), de Valencia

Y 2.º CUATRO NOVILLOS EMBOLADOS para los aficionados que gusten bajar al redondel Á capearlos.

La corrida empezarÁ Á las TRES Y MEDIA en punto
Las puertas de la Plaza se abrirÁn dos horas antes

Se observarÁn con todo rigor las prevenciones vigentes para esta clase de espectÁculos.

La banda de mÚsica de Baleares tocarÁ antes de empezar la corrida y en los intermedios.

Toda ocalidad que exceda de una peseta pagarÁ diez centimos de impuesto.

ADVERTENCIAS

Four bulls are to be killed, each four years old. Their names are Bailador, Cigarrero, Manquito, and Primoroso. The ‘stars’ on this occasion are the two espadas, Guerrita and Fabrilio. The first man is a famous matador; the second a beginner. Having made the acquaintance of a retired bull-fighter—an affable, gray-haired old gentleman, who still wears the chignon and pigtail, which are de rigueur, and by which you can always tell a bull-fighter in the crowd—I ask him to accompany me, and explain the points of the performance. He readily consents, and he secures me a private box next to the box of the president—the gentleman, generally a member of the Town Council, who is the official master of the ceremonies, judge, referee, and several other things rolled into one. I ought to mention that, the arena being open to the sky, one-half of the spectators have to sit with the blazing sun in their faces. This causes one side to be dearer than the other. There are two prices—the sol and the sombra. Seats in the shade are 50 per cent. the dearer. When I enter my box in the great arena, the spectacle is a magnificent one. Sixteen thousand people are crowded into the building, and a fourth of them are women. There are elegantly-dressed ladies in the boxes, and in the cheaper seats are gaily-attired women and girls of the lower class. Many of the women have brought their babies with them to see the show. Everybody is on the tiptoe of expectation. As we enter our box, my friend the bull-fighter has a friendly greeting from the mob. In the next box is a duke—a grandee of Spain of the first class—and a general renowned in war. Both of them lean over and shake hands effusively with my friend the bull-killer. Presently the president and his suite enter the official box. Then a trumpet sounds, and two alguazils, dressed in black velvet suits and plumed hats, ride into the ring on gaily-caparisoned steeds. They wheel round, face the president, and bow. The president then bids them summon the bull-fighters. Off go the alguazils across the ring with the message. The gates of the barrier are flung open, and a grand procession enters, and marches across the arena to salute the president. This is the prettiest part of the show. The costumes of the twenty or thirty toreros are brilliant and beautiful. Silver and gold, and yellow and crimson and blue are their jackets and breeches; their hats, of black velvet, are most picturesque; and their mantles, worn in a peculiar fashion, are such as the courtiers of a king might be proud to wear on gala days. Terrific applause breaks from the huge crowd of spectators as popular favourites advance with the band. About six of the men are mounted on wretched, broken-down horses. These men carry long lances, and are the picadors. You will see what they do presently.

The procession having saluted the president, the members of it scatter themselves about the arena, and prepare for business. Another trumpet sounds. The alguazil, in black velvet, rides up again and salutes the president. The president from his box flings him the key of the cells where the bulls are imprisoned, and he catches it in his hat. He hands the key to a torero, who opens the door of a kind of stable opposite, called the toril, and, out of the darkness into the light, out of the silence into the roar of thousands of voices, rushes an infuriated bull, full of life and spirit and courage—a magnificent beast, with terrible horns, already goaded to fierceness by sharp spikes which have been run into him in his prison.

He enters the arena alone. Everybody except the picadors leaps the barriers, and lets him have a run to himself. We are all on the tiptoe of expectation to see how the bull will behave. We can judge by his manner at first what sort of sport he will give. Now several of the toreros, mantle in hand, take their places, and begin to bait the bull to make him lively, and then the first act of the tragedy begins. Unfortunately for the foreigner who wants to see sport in a bull-fight, the first act is the most disgusting and dastardly. The picadors—the men with lances, mounted on wretched horses—have it to themselves. The picador, sitting bolt upright on his horse, charges the bull, and digs the spear into him just to tickle him up. The picador then prepares to receive the return charge of the bull. He turns his horse broadside to the bull (the poor horses have their eyes bandaged on one side), and calmly allows the infuriated beast to plunge its sharp horns right into the side of the steed. No attempt is made to save the horse. It is only used by the picador as a barrier between himself and the bull’s horns.

If the bull catches the horse fairly underneath, the sight is a hideous one. The wretched animal staggers and falls over, the life blood pouring from it. The audience shouts with delight. The men with the cloaks rush and turn the bull from the prostrate heap, and then pick the picador up. He always falls cleverly, and his legs, being encased in iron, are rarely hurt either by the bull’s horns or the falling horse. If the horse is only wounded, it is beaten on to its legs again with sticks, and the wound is stuffed with tow. It is remounted, beaten, and dragged up to the bull to be gored again. On the day of my visit, I saw a horse with its entrails hanging out actually dragged up, cruelly beaten, and remounted. This was considered glorious sport by the Spaniards. As they rode that poor disembowelled beast round the arena again, the spectacle was so hideous that I went to the corner of my box. ‘When that horse is dead, tell me, and I’ll look again,’ I said to my friend the bull-fighter. He laughed, but the next minute he leaned across to the president and said something. The president smiled and raised his hat to me, and then called down an order to one of the ring attendants. A moment afterwards the picador dismounted, and the staggering, bleeding horse was mercifully killed with a blow of the ‘puntilla.’ I saved one poor beast a few moments’ agony, at any rate, that day.

I saw four bulls killed, and the bulls between them killed seven horses. It was always a great relief to me when the bugle sounded, and the horses still living were led out of the ring. Each bull has so many minutes to live, and goes through three acts. The first with the picadors, the second with the banderilleros, and the third with the espada or matador. A bugle sounds the ‘time’ which terminates each act of the tragedy. I was always glad when the first act was over and the horses were done with. But my delight at seeing one or two go out alive was considerably modified when I was informed that the poor beasts would be kept half-starved until the following Sunday, and then brought out to be gored again. Many of the horses I saw were only fit for the knacker, but they had been good in their time. Some of them still retained fine action, and had probably, in the days of their strength, drawn the carriage of some aristocratic dame now looking down upon the ruthless slaughter. The horses are in no way necessary for the bull-fight. It is wanton cruelty to bring them in to be gored; but that is a part of the show which the Spaniards love best. When a bull has killed five or six horses, as sometimes happens, and there is a delay in bringing in others, the people go mad, and yell at the president, ‘More horses! more horses!’

After the picadors have ridden out, the banderilleros commence on the bull. Their feat is a dangerous one. They have to go up to him and stick long darts, ornamented with coloured paper, into his neck. Both darts must be stuck to a nicety side by side. The banderillero must wait till the bull comes full tilt at him, stick the darts in, and slip aside. This is a feat requiring perfect aim, a quick eye, and a steady foot. While this is going on the toreros continue to draw the bull now this way and now that with their mantles. When, maddened by the darts hanging into his bleeding neck, he dashes at them, they have to run for their lives, and leap the barrier. By this time the poor beast has been baited and worried and chased and chivied until he is fairly tired. Now the bugle sounds for the last act, and all is intense excitement.

The espada advances to the president’s box, takes off his hat, and says ‘SeÑor President, here is to you, to your family, and all Spaniards.’ He then says that he will kill the bull. All the assistants retire. The espada takes a long Toledo sword and his red cloth, and advances to the bull. Man and beast are alone in the great ring. Intelligence and skill are pitted for the first time in the contest against brute force and passion. But daring, graceful, and clever as the matadors are, the chances are a thousand to one in their favour. The bull—poor beast—always runs at the cloth and not at the man. The matador’s real danger is a slip when running from the bull. But the toreros, or assistants, are all watching, and at the slightest symptom of danger they rush at the bull and turn him, or envelop his head with their cloaks. Fight he never so bravely, the bull is doomed. He must be killed—that is the rule of the game.

There are a score of names for the different passes and feints and tricks the matador performs with the bull for a few minutes, until he raises his sword in token that he intends to kill it. He baits the bull now this way and now that with the red cloth until he gets the animal to run fairly at him. Then he thrusts the long sword just between the left shoulder and the blade. If the thrust is true and well delivered, the bull falls on his knees. His proud head is raised in defiance for a moment, and then he falls over on his side dead. When the blow does not kill him, the butchery is completed by one of the toreros with the ‘puntilla.’ There are many ways in which the espada receives the last charge of the bull. Some are dangerous, and are only practised by the great masters of the art. Some of the matadors will even dispense with the red cloth, called in the parlance of the ring ‘muletta,’ and defy the bull with folded arms. These feats call forth deafening applause.

When the bull is dead, a team of gaily-bedecked mules enters, and drags out first the dead horses, and then the dead bull. The sand is raked over the pools and tracks of blood, and another bull is turned into the arena to go through the same performance. The second bull that I saw was furious at first, but was baited at last into absolute terror. Long before it came to the turn of the matador the poor brute was bellowing piteously, and trying to leap the barriers and escape. At last he got behind a dead horse, and, making a rampart of it, gored its carcass again and again. It took the whole staff five minutes to get him out into the arena to be killed.

After the bull-fight proper was over, I witnessed a curious spectacle. As the last of the four bulls fell to the ground dead, hundreds of the spectators leaped over the barriers into the arena and took off their cloaks. Then a young bull with knobs on its horns was turned loose among them for them to bait. Hundreds of lads became amateur toreros, and practised the art on the harmless animal. He knocked down a dozen and tossed one or two, to the intense amusement of the spectators. I left young Madrid thus amusing itself, and came out of the Plaza de Toros a wiser man as to bull-fights and a much sadder one. If I live fifty years in Spain, I never want to see such another cruel ‘game of blood.’

The bull-ring is the amusement of Spain, but the theatre is well patronized. I always study the theatres of foreign countries when I get a chance, and the Spanish theatre is one of the most curious I have seen. The Opera or Teatro Real is the principal, and is patronized by the aristocracy. GayarrÉ is the star there at present. The Teatro EspaÑol is devoted to the legitimate drama. The other theatres which play operettas, farces, and topical reviews are the Apolo, the Princesa, the Variedades, the Lara, the Eslava (so called after a priest who left the money to build it), and the Novedades. I will deal with this latter class first.

At nearly all Spanish theatres the performance commences at half-past eight, and is divided into four parts, each of which is called a ‘funcion.’ You pay for each of these—so much for entrance and so much for your seat. Thus, when you go to the Apolo, the performance commences at half-past eight with ‘La Gran Via.’ This is over at a quarter-past nine, and out you all go. A new audience now comes in and sees the first act of ‘Cadiz,’ an operetta, which terminates at ten. Out you all go again, and a fresh audience comes in and sees the second act of ‘Cadiz,’ which is over at a quarter to eleven. Out we all go again, and a fourth audience fills the theatre for another performance of ‘La Gran Via,’ which terminates about half-past eleven.

There is a prison scene in ‘La Gran Via.’ Several Vias are represented. One of them is called the ‘Via de la Liberdad,’ and it shows the side of a prison wall.

Some time before I arrived in Spain there had been a military revolt, and six sergeants who had taken a prominent part in the insurrection were confined in a State prison on the charge of high treason, but—owing to the notoriously lax discipline of Spanish prisons—the sergeants very shortly afterwards managed to make their escape, and eventually they succeeded in crossing the Pyrenees into France.

The escape of the sergeants is a standing joke among Spaniards of every shade of political opinion, and the scene in which the six sergeants are seen scudding along the prison wall, called the ‘Via de la Liberdad,’ is always received with tremendous roars of laughter, and it is probably the main cause of the great success of ‘La Fiesta de la Gran Via.’

One day a governor of a gaol who went to a bull-fight was astonished to see several of his prisoners who were under sentence of death enjoying themselves at the spectacle. There is always a golden key to a Spanish prison, and you can generally get a day or a night out if you are on good terms with the officials, and give your word of honour that you will come back again. I dare say a good many people will credit me with giving an extra throw to the hatchet, a stronger pull than usual at the long-bow; but the truth of my prison story is amply borne out by a sensational crime which has startled all Spain, shaken the Puerta del Sol to its foundation, brought lumps of the Generaliffe rolling down the Alhambra hill, caused the Alcazar of Seville to contemplate suicide in the Guadalquivir, and shaken up the coffins of the Kings of Spain in the gloomy Pantheon of the Escorial.

One night an old lady was found murdered in Madrid. She had been first killed, and then saturated with petroleum and set on fire, but the fire had gone out before it had done its work, and the wounds which had caused death were visible. I need not repeat all the incidents, but after suspicion falling on various persons, the crime has at last been brought home to the old lady’s son, who was supposed at the time the murder was committed to be a prisoner in close confinement in the Madrid gaol.

Here is a shilling shocker with a vengeance. The young gentleman had, it was proved, actually got out of prison with the connivance of the authorities, spent the night at liberty, and returned early in the morning very much the worse for liquor. Yet not a word was said by the officials of the place who knew the facts, because they knew it would get them into hot water. The story reads like an invention of the romancer, but it is only a series of facts. Spain still remains one of the most remarkable countries in Europe, and its manners and customs are more worthy of the ‘Arabian Nights’ than modern history.

It was at one of the minor theatres that I heard one of the performers imitate an actor with a peculiar voice and mannerism. The audience recognised the imitation, and encored it again and again. ‘Ah,’ said I to myself, ‘Spain has its Henry Irving. I must find him out.’ I made my inquiries, and the result was that I booked a stall to sit out a four-act Spanish drama at the Teatro EspaÑol written by one of the great dramatists of to-day, Don JosÉ Echegaray, and entitled ‘Haroldo el Normando.’ When the principal actor, Rafael Calvo, stepped upon the stage and gave off his first speech, I recognised the original of the caricature in a moment, and I knew by the reception and the bursts of applause that I was seeing Spain’s favourite tragedian. Calvo’s acting and declamation were splendid, but his voice was disagreeable; his gestures were natural, but his mannerisms were marked enough to enable me to give a good imitation of him after one visit to the theatre.

Calvo, who is only a little over thirty, is not a handsome man, but he is very intense and powerful, and is the great exponent of the modern natural school. His great rival is Antonio Vico, who is of the old and stilted school. Vico also has a bad voice, a defect from which many of the Spanish actors suffer.

At many points in the play the ladies wept and the gentlemen used their pocket-handkerchiefs. The mounting and dresses were beneath contempt, and there was not a line of comedy or a laugh from beginning to end of the play.

The audience was not a large one, considering the size and sumptuous embellishments of the theatre. I inquired of a Spanish friend why the legitimate drama was not better patronized. He told me that there was never a great house when Echegaray was the author. Ladies were afraid of him. His plays were so dreadfully miserable, they cried for a week after seeing them. He would spring scenes of horror on his audience without a moment’s preparation. Suddenly the scene would change, and you would see a mother weeping over two dead children on the stage. Nothing that could harrow the feelings was spared, and the author persisted in leaving everybody miserable at the end. After a new play by Echegaray everyone in Madrid asks, ‘Well, how many deaths are there in it?’ He is a grand writer, full of nervous force and poetic thought, but his plays make people so wretched that those who do not enjoy the luxury of a good cry stop away. Everybody says, ‘What a splendid writer!’ The newspapers laud him to the skies. The critics point to him as a man who maintains the prestige of Spanish dramatic literature. But the Spanish people, like the English people, decline to take out their theatrical amusement in essays and sermons delivered from the stage. They go to the theatre to be amused, not to study literature, and so, in spite of the abuse of the critics, who are some of them authors themselves of neglected ten-act tragedies in blank verse, the Spaniards flock to operettas, farces, comedies, reviews, medleys, pieces of any sort so long as they are laughable or interesting, and they leave the legitimate drama and the plays of misery by SeÑor Echegaray to the amateur and professional critics, who think, because they choose to sit at a theatre as in a church, that there should be no more cakes and ale.

But to return to the Spanish custom of taking a play at an act a night. Of course you may wish to see a play through in one evening. In this case you buy tickets for the second and third ‘funcion,’ and keep your seat. A man comes round between each act and collects the tickets for the next. Say you want to see the whole four ‘funcions’ out, you purchase four tickets. The ticket is a slip of paper—half of it is for your numbered seat, another half your entrance ticket. You must buy four entrance tickets and four tickets for your seat to entitle you to sit out the whole performance. The tickets are different colours, so that the checktakers may recognise at once for which funcion they are issued. The first audience comes in with green tickets, the second with pink, the third with white, and the fourth with yellow. The great draws at the present moment at three of the theatres are local reviews in rhyme, and full of topical allusions. The singing and dancing are good, and the points are taken up all over the house in a manner which would gladden the hearts of our burlesque writers. ‘La Fiesta de la Gran Via,’ which is being played at the Eslava, has beaten all previous records. I assisted at the 41,500th performance! Where are our long runs after that?

The piece is played twice a night, and on Sundays and fÊte days, of which there are scores in Spain, four times—twice at the morning and twice at the evening performance.

The anti-Conservative demonstrations in Madrid and other Spanish towns, which have been lately of such a violent character as to make some people think we were on the eve of another Spanish revolution, are really volcanic in their origin. The Spaniards are not a very demonstrative people. As a rule, if you offered them a perpetual pension they wouldn’t utter a shout or wave a hat. But every now and then, suddenly and unexpectedly, without any previous warning, Castilian pride and Moorish stolidity give way to the wildest excitement and the most utter disregard of the conventionalities of life. Be the offending party a Cabinet Minister, a bishop, or a bull, the Spaniard has but one cry, ‘Muerta!'—death! It does not mean all that it says. It is the language of the bull-ring carried into public life, and that is all. The bull-ring enriches Spanish language as the racecourse enriches the English.

Madrid is very much like a volcano on the eve of an eruption. Day and night there is a seething mass of cloaked gentry promenading the streets and squares in the eager hope of something turning up. The Puerta del Sol is as much alive at two in the morning as our Mansion House corner is at two in the afternoon. When the Spaniards go to bed is a mystery. Special editions of the evening papers come out in Madrid at 1 a.m., and small boys of the street-Arab type yell their ‘Speshal ‘Dishuns’ under your window till three, and if anything is on, until four. This all-night shouting and the ceaseless traffic no one who has the misfortune to sleep in a room looking on to the Puerta del Sol will ever forget. And the reason that Madrid is on the alert all night is that it is waiting, like Mr. Micawber, for something to turn up. When something does turn up to justify a row, the MadrileÑos make the most of it, and they yell ‘Muerta!’ just as a London mob would yell ‘Let him have it!’ ‘Muerta!’ is cried when the spectators in the bull-ring have had enough of the bull, and want him got rid of. ‘Muerta!’ shouted concerning a politician, a prelate, or a prince, means ‘Let him take his hook!’

That expression, by-the-by, though it looks like English slang, is quite a classical utterance. Its origin lies among the Roman gladiatorial games. A gladiator took his hook when the pole with a hook at the end of it was used to drag his dying or dead body from the arena.

The window of my sitting-room looks out upon the world-famed Puerta del Sol. Night and day a mighty, ever-changing crowd passes before me. Night and day the plashing fountain plays in the middle of the great public square. Night and day trains and ‘buses and mule-drawn waggons and beautiful landaus and phaetons and broughams and mail-coaches drawn by horses not to be surpassed in Hyde Park dash here and there. Night and day the hum of the idle, sauntering crowd rises and falls, and makes music to my ears.

Madrid is not a city. It is only a town. But such a town!—such streets! such shops! such horses! such carriages! such drives! such promenades! and over all the everlasting gaiety and insouciance of a people whose grand motto in all things mundane is this, ‘We have only one life—let us make the best of it and worry about nothing.’ Your true Spaniard never hurries and never worries and never frets. He inherits the dignity and the fatalism of the Moors, who have left their mark not only on the architecture of the cities, but upon the character of the citizens. If anything is a little beyond him, he folds his hands, smokes a cigarette, and waits for the dÉnouement.

Quietly and calmly, with a Spanish guide who walked everywhere so leisurely that I had to keep walking round and round him in order not to leave him miles behind, I saw everything that was to be seen in Madrid. I saw the royal palaces, I saw the bed—ay, and the mattress and bolster—on which King Alfonso died. I saw the royal stables and the royal carriages, I got a desperate fit of the blues in the Escorial—the eighth wonder of the world, the morbid outcome of a morbid mind; the last home of Spanish kings—that glowing palace on a barren rock, in which the monkish Philip died a hideous death of lingering agony, loathsome to himself and all around him, and in his last hours smitten by a gnawing terror that, after all, the royal road to heaven might not be over the dead bodies of countless victims slain ‘to the greater glory of God.’ I drove in the Prado, and saw grandees of Spain by the gross. I met the sisters of the King and ‘el Rey Chico,’ ‘the King Baby,’ with his royal mamma, all out for a drive, and I had all the scandals poured into my ear as great and titled ladies passed in their magnificent equipages.

Some years ago the ladies of Madrid took to driving high-stepping horses in mail phaetons, and even tooling showy teams through the principal thoroughfares. In the crowded traffic this was the cause of frequent accidents. The alcalde (clever man!) made it a regulation that no lady under thirty should drive, except in the Park. You may go all over Madrid now, and you don’t meet a single lady holding the reins. They are all under the regulation age.

Next to the bull-fights and the theatres, the things in which I have taken the greatest interest in Spain are the dances and the funerals. Both of these are so curious that I shall leave them until I have travelled with the reader a little further afield. One thing struck me in Madrid as it has struck me everywhere in Spain, and that is the way in which the Germans are monopolizing the trade of the country. Every hotel is crammed with German commercial travellers, and the shops are filled with German goods. The Germans I meet are excellent linguists. They speak Spanish fluently, and many of them can carry on a conversation in English and French as well. The Germans have displayed an enterprise in getting the trade of Europe into their hands which is truly remarkable. Their dealers and manufacturers visit the different countries, study the popular taste, and then produce articles which are as national as possible in character. For instance, half the fans and mantillas which are sold in Madrid and the large provincial towns are of German make. And yet they are absolutely Spanish. Many other things are of German make, and thousands of French and English tourists who carry away with them boxes full of specimen Spanish goods to present to their friends are really taking home things which have been imported from the Fatherland. As to cigars, the Germans supply three-fourths of the genuine Havannahs, even in Spanish seaports at which ships from Havannah constantly touch.

France and England also do a large trade with Spain in manufactured goods. But they supply only the articles which are purely French and English. It has been reserved for Germany to supply, not only German, but Spanish goods to Spain.

The cafÉs in Madrid are enormous and gorgeous in the extreme. The climate does not allow the guests to sit out of doors, but the saloons inside are so vast that in some of them a regiment might go through its manoeuvres. The cafÉs are thronged night and day. Here the revolutions are hatched, here governments are overthrown. Chocolate is the great Spanish drink, but of an evening quite half the people have tea.

And such tea! It is a pale lemon colour when you pour it out, and consists principally of hot water. I noticed several ladies and gentlemen flavoured it with a small glass of rum. The tea I had in one of the grand cafÉs was rum without being flavoured. In fact, it was the rummest tea I ever tasted in my life.

One evening, hot and thirsty after seeing four ‘funcions’ at four different theatres, I was wondering what I could drink, when I saw a cafÉ in the Calle de Azenal that had a large advertisement outside, ‘English refreshments.’ I rushed to the door to read the list of English refreshments that was displayed on a card outside. I only read the top line, and that was enough.

This was the top line: ‘Zurzaparilla!’ One travels and learns. I never knew before that sarsaparilla was the national drink of the Briton.

I stayed at an excellent French hotel in Madrid, but I got tired of the French table d’hÔte. I wanted to eat as the Spaniards eat. One evening I persuaded a Spanish gentleman to take me to a real Spanish middle-class restaurant, and let me taste the fare of the country. The Spanish are a frugal and moderate race. Two or three dishes and dessert—that is their dinner. There is no long bill of fare as among the French.

The restaurant was a quiet room on the ground-floor of a modest-looking house. There were one or two families and several single gentlemen dining. The women wore handkerchiefs on their heads and shawls over their shoulders. People dropped in, had a soup and a dish of meat, an orange and some nuts, and went away satisfied. Our bill of fare was more extravagant, but it created a sensation. The landlord and all the waiters came in turns to look at the extraordinary Englishmen who had such gigantic appetites.

Here is the exact menu. We began with olives and pickled pimientos and guindelias and chilis. These were the hors d'oeuvres. Then cigarettes. Then we had an ordinary thin soup, followed by cigarettes; then came the great national dish, called cocido. If you have a good dish of cocido (pronounced cothido, because of the Spanish lisp given to the c before certain vowels) you have a good deal for your dinner. It is a savoury stew of chicken, potatoes, sausage, bacon, and white beans, all boiled up with pieces of beef. In most Spanish families this is the everyday dish. Of course the poorer classes have to leave out some of the ingredients, except on festive occasions. In Andalusia the peasants will sit round a huge panful of their version of this article. It is made according to their means, and often vegetables are plentiful, but the pieces of meat few and far between, and each man ladles it out by spoonfuls into his mouth. Plates are dispensed with.

The foreigner who is suddenly confronted with a huge dish of cocido and politely requested to help himself is in some difficulty. He takes a spoonful at hazard. The waiter still stands at his elbow. ‘The seÑor has only taken beans.’ Again you make a dash with the spoon and secure something else. The waiter stares, but does not move away. ‘The seÑor has only taken sausage.’ The seÑor, confused, requests the waiter to assist him; and then the process, though slow, is interesting. A spoonful of beans on the plate; then, selected with the greatest care; a piece of chicken; then a patient search for a slice of sausage buried under a mound of cabbage; then the cabbage itself; then a minute devoted to a voyage of discovery in search of the nicest piece of beef; then an exploration in search of a succulent morsel of bacon; then a spoonful of the potatoes; and then, over all, an extra spoonful of the beautiful gravy. I timed my waiter, and he took six minutes and a half to help me to cocido. When the dish passes down a table d’hÔte it takes about an hour to go round. It is for this reason that the Spaniards help themselves all together at the same time from the common dish.

The cocido was excellent. Well cooked, it is a dinner for a king. I intend to introduce it into England upon my return. But I am afraid it will give rise to a good deal of ill-feeling in families. Somebody will get all the slices of the sausage, and then there will be recriminations and angry words. We have neither the patience nor the politeness of the Spaniards; and cocido is a dish that requires a good deal of both.

The next item after cigarettes was a Spanish salad. This salad is prepared in a peculiar way, and spread out upon bread into which the oil and vinegar have been allowed to soak. This, too, was excellent. Then more cigarettes; then a cheese made of honey and cream, and several other ingredients which require to be taken on trust; and then, after more cigarettes, some ‘angel’s hair,’ which is really a preparation of orange-rind very thinly shredded. More cigarettes; then an orange, raisins of Malaga, and almonds and Barcelona nuts, dried and salted, and delicious. I am so enchanted with these ‘almindras’ that I have made all my boxes overweight with them. The wines with this feast were ValdepeÑas—a red wine made from grapes grown on the rocky plains around Madrid—and Jerez, which, of course, is sherry. I have been to Jerez lately, and, having seen the extent of the vineyards, I beg to add that, though Jerez is, of course, sherry, it does not follow that all sherry is Jerez—very, very far from it—often thousands of miles from it. And we wound up with more cigarettes.

To finish the evening in a real Spanish way, after going to a rather low Spanish cafÉ to see the real Spanish dancing, we had, before retiring to rest, ‘Dos chocolates con pica-tostes'; and that, if you please, is two cups of thick chocolate, with square fingers of bread beautifully fried in olive-oil. And we weren’t ill.