There is no exclusiveness and no caste about Spanish society; all the houses are open, and the guests are always welcome. There are, of course, the houses of the nobility, and there are many grades in this _Grandeza_, some being of very recent creation, others of the uncontaminated _sangre azul_; but there is no hard-and-fast line. The successful politician or the popular writer has the entrée anywhere, and there is no difficulty about going into the very best of the Court society, if one has friends in that _tertulia_. One guest asks permission to present his or her friend, the permission is courteously granted, and the thing is done. Poets and dramatists are in great request in Madrid society. It is the custom to ask them to recite their own compositions, and as almost every Spaniard is a poet, whatever else he may be, there is no lack of entertainment. All the popular authors--Campoamor, Nuñez de Arce, Pelayo, Valera, and many others--may thus be heard; but the paid performer (so common in London drawing-rooms) of music, light drama, or poetical recitation, is probably absolutely unknown in Madrid society. During the season balls are given occasionally at the Palace, and at the houses of the great nobility, the Fernan-Nuñez, the Romana, the Medinaceli, and others, whose names are as well known in Paris and London as in Madrid. Dinner-parties are also becoming much more common in private houses than they were before the Restoration, and as for public dinners, they are so frequent that they bid fair to become of the same importance as the like institution in England. Costume balls, dances, dinners, and evening entertainments among the _corps diplomatique_ abound. Everyone in Madrid has a box or stall at the Teatro Real, or opera-house, and many ladies make a practice of "receiving" in their _palcos_; and in the entrance-hall, after the performance is over, an hour may be spent, while ostensibly waiting for carriages, in conversation, gossip, mild flirtation, and generally making one's self agreeable among the groups all engaged in the same amusement. Almost everyone, also, whatever his means may be, has an _abono_ at one or other of the numerous theatres, sometimes at more than one; and if it be a box, the subscribers take friends with them, or receive visits there. It is a common thing, either in the opera-house or in the theatres, for a couple of friends to join in the _abono_; in this case it is arranged on which nights the whole box or the two or three stalls shall be the property of each in turn. Besides paying for the seats, there is always a separate charge each night made for the _entrada_--in the Teatro Real it is a peseta and a half, in the others one peseta. By this arrangement anyone can enter the theatre by paying the _entrada_, and take chance of finding friends there, frequently spending an hour or so going from one box to another. All this gives the theatre more the air of being an immense "At Home" than what we are