Spain in the seventeenth century had reached the lowest depth of her decadence and impoverishment; and yet we find that century an age--to quote a Spanish term--of "gallantries and pearls," in which a craze for reckless luxury continued to prevail in every quarter. Narratives innumerable inform us of the life and doings of that prodigal court and prodigal aristocracy; their ruinous and incessant festivals; the fortunes that were thrown away on furniture, and jewels, and costume. True, we are told by Bertaut de Rouen that, except upon their numerous holidays, the costume of the Spanish men was plain enough. This author, who calls them otherwise "debauched and ignorant," says that their clothes were all of "méchante frise," and adds that they continually took snuff, "dont ils ont toujours les narines pleines, ce qui fait qu'ils n'ont que des mouchoirs de laine, de toile grise, et peinte comme de la toile de la Chine." The same traveller, attending an ordinary reception in the royal palace at Madrid, was unable to distinguish the nobles from the lower orders, except that, by the privilege peculiar to this country, the former kept their hats on in the presence of the sovereign. Even of Philip himself he says: "Le Roy d'Espagne estoit debout avec un habit fort simple et fort ressemblant à tous ses portraits"; alluding, probably, to those of Philip the Fourth by Velazquez, in which the monarch wears a plain cloth doublet. But when the Spaniard dressed himself for any scene of gala show, his spendthrift inclinations swelled into a positive disease. The women, too, squandered enormous sums on finery. The Marchioness of Liche, said to have been the loveliest Española of that day, is spoken of by Bertaut as wearing "un corps de brocard d'argent avec de grandes basques à leur mode, la jupe d'une autre étoffe avec grand nombre de pierreries, et cela luy fetoit fort bien." An anonymous manuscript of the period, published by Gayangos in the _Revista de España_ for 1884, describes the _fiestas_ celebrated at Valladolid in 1605, in honour of the English ambassador and his retinue. In this relation the Duke of Lerma is quoted as possessing a yearly income of three hundred thousand _cruzados_, besides "as much again in jewellery and furniture, and gold and silver services." At the state banquets which were given at that wasteful court, even the pies and tarts were washed with gold or silver; and at a single feast the dishes of various kinds of fare amounted to two thousand and two hundred. At the banquet given by the Duke of Lerma, three special sideboards were constructed to sustain the weight of four hundred pieces of silver, "all of them of delicate design and exquisitely wrought of silver, gold, and enamel, together with innumerable objects of glass and crystal of capricious form, with handles, lids, and feet of finest gold."