speak two or three times to a young girl, and the entire city immediately declare you to be _novio_ and _novia_,--that is, affianced, and make a thousand innocent jokes about the passion they have invented for you; which jokes, innocent though they be, do not fail, however, to make you somewhat uneasy, by bringing visions of conjugal life before your eyes. All this gallantry is, however, more apparent than real; in spite of languishing glances, burning looks, tender or impassioned conversations, pretty little shortenings of your name, and the _querido_ (beloved) with which it is preceded, you must not conceive any too flattering ideas. A Frenchman to whom a woman of the world were to say the quarter of what a young Granadian girl says to one of her numerous novios, without the least importance being attached to it, would think himself already in Paradise; but he would soon find his mistake, for if he became too bold, he would be instantly called to order, and summoned to state his matrimonial intentions before the nearest relatives. This honest liberty of language, so far removed from the forced and artificial manners of the nations of the north, is preferable to hypocrisy of speech, which always hides, at bottom, some coarse thought or other. At Granada, to pay attentions to a married woman seems quite extraordinary; while nothing appears more natural there than to pay court to a young girl. It is the contrary in France: no one ever addresses, there, a word to young, unmarried ladies, and this is what so often renders marriages unhappy. In Spain, a _novio_ sees his _novia_ two or three times a day, speaks to her without witnesses, accompanies her in her walks, and comes to talk with her in the evening through the bars of the balcony, or the window of the ground-floor. He thus has time to become acquainted with her, to study her character, and does not buy, as the saying is, a pig in a poke.