Those things may be seen yet in the neighborhood of Granada, Seville, and Cordova; but in Madrid, especially on holidays, the cosmopolitan frock is predominant. Only at times do you see a black mantilla pinned to a high comb, and under the mantilla eyes blacker still. In general faces are dark, glances quick, speech loud. Gesticulation is not so passionate as in Italy, where when a man laughs he squirms like a snake, and when he is angry he gnaws off the top of his hat; still, it is energetic and lively. Faces have well-defined features and a resolute look. It is easy to understand that even in amusement these people retain their special and definite character. However, they are a people who on weekdays are full of sedateness, bordering on sloth, sparing of words, and collected. Sunday enlivens them, as does also the hope of seeing a bloody spectacle. Let us cut across the Prado and enter an alley leading to the circus. The crowd is becoming still denser. Here and there shouts are rising, the people applauding single members of the company, who are going each by himself to the circus. Here is an omnibus filled with “capeadors,” that is, partakers in the fight, whose whole defence is red capes with which they mislead and irritate the bull. Through the windows are visible black heads with pigtails, and wearing three-cornered hats. The coats of various colors worn by the capeadors are embroidered with gold and silver tinsel. These capeadors ride in an omnibus, for the modest pay which they get for their perilous service does not permit a more showy conveyance. Somewhat farther, three mounted “picadors” push their way through the people. The sun plays on their broad-brimmed white hats. They are athletic in build, but bony and lean. Their shaven faces have a stern, and, as it were, concentrated look. They are sitting on very high wooden saddles, hence they are perfectly visible over the crowd. Each of them holds in his hand a lance, with a wooden ball at the end of it, from which is projecting an iron point not above half an inch long. The picador cannot kill a bull with a weapon like that,—he can only pierce him or stop him for a moment; but in the last case he must have in his arm the strength of a giant. Looking at these men, I remember involuntarily Doré’s illustrations to “Don Quixote.” In fact, each of these horsemen might serve as a model for the knight “of the rueful visage.” That lean silhouette, outlined firmly on the sky, high above the heads of the multitude, the lance standing upright, and that bare-boned horse under the rider, those purely Gothic outlines of living things,—all answer perfectly to the conception which we form of the knight of La Mancha, when we read the immortal work of Cervantes.