The proceedings are frequently varied by their making the sign of the cross in the Spanish manner, which is much more complicated than ours; they execute this manœuvre with a degree of rapidity and precision worthy of Prussian soldiers. The management of the fan is an art that is totally unknown in France. The Spanish women excel in it; the fan opens, shuts, and is twirled about in their fingers so rapidly and so lightly, that a conjurer could not do it better. Some ladies who are great amateurs have a most valuable collection of fans. We ourselves saw a collection of this kind which numbered more than a hundred, of various patterns. There were fans of every country and every period; fans made of ivory, tortoiseshell, sandal-wood, adorned with spangles, or painted in water-colours, in the style of Louis XIV. and Louis XV.; fans made of China or Japan rice-paper; in a word, fans of every possible description. Some of them were decorated with rubies, diamonds, and other precious stones. This custom of forming large collections of fans is a piece of tasteful extravagance, a charming mania in a pretty woman. The shutting and opening of the fans produce a little hissing sound, which, being repeated more than a thousand times a minute, pierces the confused hum which floats above the crowd, and has something very strange about it for a French ear. When a woman meets one of her acquaintance, she makes a little sign with her fan, and pronounces the word _agur_ as she passes him. At present let us say something about Spanish beauty. What we Frenchmen believe to constitute the Spanish type does not exist in Spain; at least, I have not met with it as yet. We generally picture to ourselves, whenever a señora or a mantilla is mentioned, a long, pale, oval face, large black eyes with velvet eyebrows, a sharp nose, slightly arched, a pair of bright red lips, and, to complete the whole, a warm, gold-like tint, bearing out the line in the song, _Elle est jaune comme une orange_ (She is as yellow as an orange). This is the Arabic or Moorish, and not the Spanish type. The women of Madrid are charming creatures, in the fullest acceptation of the word; out of every four, there are three who are pretty; but they do not correspond in the least with the notion we have formed of them. They are short, delicate, and well-shaped; their foot is small, their figure graceful, and their bust full and voluptuous; but their skin is very white, their features fine and irregular, and their mouth formed like a heart, resembling exactly some of our beauties in the time of the Regent.[6] Many have light chestnut hair, and you cannot take two turns upon the Prado without meeting seven or eight women with fair hair of every possible shade, from the light blond to the most vivid red, like the beard of Charles V. It is an error to suppose that there are no fair-complexioned women in Spain. Blue eyes are very common, but they are not so highly esteemed as black ones.