Therefore, until two centuries ago, the women of Christian Spain were suffered to take their seat on cushions of brocade or damask. Only the men made use of stools or chairs, according to their rank. To "give a chair" (_dar silla_) to a visitor of the male sex was to pay him a valued courtesy;[18] and even now the wife of a grandee of Spain goes through the honourable though irksome ceremony, at the palace of Madrid, of "taking the cushion." [18] "Hónrale el Sr Roberto, alma del Rey, y _le ha dado Silla_, y le tuvo á su lado." Lope de Vega's comedy, _The Key of Honour_. [Illustration: VII CHAIRS UPHOLSTERED WITH _GUADAMECILES_ (_17th Century_)] Another usage with the Spaniards of the seventeenth and immediately preceding centuries was the "dais of honour" or _estrado de cumplimiento_. This was a platform very slightly raised, and separated by a railing from the rest of the room. The curious manuscript discovered by Gayangos, descriptive of court-life at Valladolid in 1605, contains the following account of one of the occasions when the Queen, following a common custom of a Sunday, dined alone, in sight of all the aristocracy. "The table was laid upon the dais (_estrado alto_), beneath a canopy of brocade that overhung the whole of it. The queen sat at the head of the table, and three ladies, standing, waited on her; two uncovering the dishes as they came,[19] and the third carving. The dishes were brought from the dining-room door by the _meninos_, who handed them to the ladies. Other ladies of the royal household, wives or daughters of grandees, stood leaning against the wall in company with gentlemen who, on such occasions, sue for leave beforehand to attend on Lady So and So, or So and So. Commonly there are two such cavaliers to every dame. If the queen asks for water, one of these ladies takes it to her, kneels, makes an obeisance, kisses the goblet, hands it to her majesty, and retires to her appointed place. Behind the queen was one of her chamberlains. Many of the Englishmen were witnessing the meal. They always put the English first on such occasions; and as they are such hulking fellows (God bless them!) I, who was at their back, scarce noted anything of what was passing, and only saw that many plates went to and fro." [19] The covers would be fastened by a lock and key, as a defence, not against poison, but against theft. "A little afterwards Don Federico de Cardona, who had gone out to see how matters were proceeding, returned, bearing a large silver vessel, the cover of which was secured by a lock and key, as is the custom in Spain."--Countess d'Aulnoy's _Travels_. As late as the year 1792, Townsend, in his "Directions to the Itinerant in Spain," recommends (vol. i., p. 2) that the vessel to boil the traveller's meat should be provided with a cover and a lock.