The panorama underneath is duller now; occasionally a foolish horseman canters by, covered as to his person and his charger's quarters with a flowing roquelaure of sheeny green satin; or a black-haired damsel trips it by, with features concealed by sky-blue mask, and proportions by an outer vesture of a painfully bright gamboge colour. I wonder is her hair her own, and are her eyes black. Most likely they are--night eyes are the rule here--the fair (that is the dark) sex are all going to purgatory if the French couplet be authority:-- "Les yeux noirs Vont au purgatoire." Again fanciful reflection is broken in upon by the thrumming of guitars, the shrill squeak of fifes, and the eternal whirr and jingle of the tambourines and triangles, and I descend and make my way through the fast-thickening crowds to my hotel. There, where the company, like the waiters, is polyglot; where a noble, white-bearded English gentleman is sandwiched between a little German professor and a Diputado to the Congress, where French journalists sit by young American exquisites, who are picking up notions in Europe, and mere tourists who have come to "do" Spain in thirteen days are listening to the experiences of a mining engineer from the West Riding of Yorkshire, who has been in the country for thirteen years; the gossip, unlike the fun without, is fast and furious. But as it is all of politics, and I gave the reader a dose of that in the last chapter and may have to repeat it anon, I turn to the windows and scan the ever-animated, always-varying picture on the Puerta del Sol. Ladies in veils white and black, as of Genoa and Milan respectively, pass and re-pass, gilt missals in their hands. They will be at the masked balls to-night, for this, as I have said already, is the home of paradox, where the announcement of the church in which the Quarant'ore, or Forty-hours' Exposition of the Sacrament, is being held, is printed in the same column with the theatrical advertisements. Over the way stand a group in the national "capa." Why do they not wear slouched and plumed beavers? To me a chimney-pot hat surmounting a cloak is as dire an outrage on poetic association as a Venetian bravo with a quizzing-glass. It offends the sense of fitness. What if the Madrileños were to take to the Ulster-coat? It would make a capital Carnival disguise at all events. But the cloak, is it not mysterious, brigandish--tragic, if you will? Mark that loosely-built, tawny man of dare-devil aspect on the edge, bending intently towards the excited speaker in the middle. Something has discomposed him, for his cheeks purple. There is an agitated flutter under the cloak, and its folds are flung back. You expect to be startled by the blade of a stiletto, and out comes a soiled pocket-handkerchief! It is as if Jupiter Tonans were to threaten a thunderbolt and compromise with a sneeze.