The Gran Teatro Calderon has a very pretty interior, and is quite Parisian in appearance. When filled almost exclusively with sparkling dresses and gorgeous uniforms, it has a brilliant effect. Notwithstanding recent events, the Spanish people, when we were at Valladolid, seemed to be enthusiastically loyal. Just before the performance began, a large picture of Queen Isabel, placed in the centre of the house, immediately over the royal box, was suddenly unveiled. All in the theatre with one accord stood up, turning reverentially towards it. The gendarmes posted in various parts of the _salle_ presented arms, and the orchestra played the national hymn. The performance of some never-before-heard-of opera, with a title that, to us foreigners, was incomprehensible, did not, in a musical sense, do much credit to Spanish talent. However, if the prompter perhaps had not shouted so loud all through the piece, we should have heard the singers to better advantage. As it was, there was one singular duet, at all events, between a very fat, square little tenor and a long, lean baritone, of which no adequate idea can be presented, unless it be that of a two-part song performed by some person in the agonies of death and an old hound shut up in a kennel when the rest of the pack are out hunting. What we liked very much, at all events while on our travels, was to be able to light cigarettes at the lamps in the grand saloon. Here in Spain one smokes well nigh everywhere. Oftentimes in the middle of the _table d'hôte_, if the _entr'acte_ between the courses be at all a long one, cigarettes are lighted, and thrown away after a dozen puffs or so. Now women cannot naturally dislike tobacco, for in Spain tobacco is smoked everywhere, and the ladies don't faint or turn up the whites of their eyes in pretended horror of the filthy weed. On the contrary, smoking with themselves is a favourite pastime in private, if not in public, and the ladies' apartments are often fragrant with more than a _soupçon_ of that herb the odour of which was so abominable to the British Solomon. And, indeed, why should it not be so? There are many worse smells that are endured without a murmur than the fresh aroma of pure Havanna tobacco, King James's Counterblast notwithstanding.