Valets, on the like occasion, speak in the same style; and when lovers address compliments to their mistresses, and these reply in the same strain, the play of far-fetched metaphors is aggravated by antitheses to a degree which is intolerable to any but a Spanish formed taste.[536] But it must not be forgotten that this language of gallantry was in Calderon’s time spoken by the fashionable world, and that it was a vernacular property of the ancient national poetry. Faults of a less pardonable nature in Calderon’s dramas, are the stale jests and meaningless plays on words uttered by servants,[537] and the burlesque situations to which the disgusting accidents, occasioned by certain nocturnal showers from windows give rise. But according to the testimony of travellers, such accidents are very common at night in the streets of Madrid and Lisbon; and it must be recollected that in Calderon’s time the jests of servants were considered as indispensable in a Spanish drama of intrigue, as the presence of the _gracioso_ himself, who is, for the most part, one of the valets.[538] But the violations of cultivated taste which occur in Calderon’s comedies of intrigue, are so amply redeemed, that the critic cannot long hesitate to decide whether faults or beauties are most abundant. Some of these dramas are particularly remarkable for those descriptive narratives, by the introduction of which nearly all the Spanish comedies of the same class bring to recollection their original relationship with novels.[539] Though individual character is wanting, yet sometimes in the course of the intrigue, beautiful characteristic traits unexpectedly occur.[540] The delicacy of the point of honour, which in all these dramas supplies the place of morality, is frequently exhibited by Calderon in its most brilliant point of view;[541] and he sometimes with much formality oversteps the Spanish rule, by which moralizing was excluded from this species of drama.[542] The application which may be made of the plot is frequently denoted by the title of the piece, and is still more distinctly developed at the conclusion.[543] Calderon deserves praise for having but seldom introduced sonnets in his comedies of intrigue, though he has amply availed himself of other freedoms, in order to maintain the privilege of poetry in pourtraying the scenes of common life.[544]