To conclude my account of the coffee-houses, I will remark that the _sorbetes_ differ from those in France by being more solid; that the _quesitos_ are little ices, very hard, and shaped like small cheeses; there are some of all sorts, apricot, pine-apple, orange, and so on, as in Paris; but there are likewise some made up with butter (_manteca_) and eggs not yet formed, and taken from the hens which have been opened on purpose. This custom is peculiar to Spain, for I never heard of this singular piece of refinement anywhere else but at Madrid. They give you also _spumas_ of coffee, chocolate, and other materials. These _spumas_ are a kind of iced whipt cream, as light as a feather, and sometimes powdered with cinnamon grated very fine. All these various compounds are accompanied by _barquilos_, a kind of cake or wafer rolled up in a long cylindrical shape, through which you drink your _bebida_, as you would with a syphon, by sucking slowly one of the ends. This is a little piece of refinement which allows you to enjoy the coolness of the beverage longer than you otherwise could do. Coffee is not served up in cups, but in glasses; it is, however, very rarely taken. All these details will perhaps strike the reader as highly fastidious; but if he were exposed, as I am, to a heat of from 30 to 35 degrees, he would consider them deeply interesting. The papers most frequently met with in the coffee-houses are the _Eco del Comercio_, the _Nacional_, and the _Diario_, which gives a list of the various festivals every day, the hour at which mass is performed and sermons preached in the various churches, the degree of heat, lost dogs, young countrywomen who want situations as wet-nurses, criadas who want places, &c. &c.--But it is striking eleven. It is time to return home; the only persons in the _Calle d'Alcala_ are a few promenaders who have stopped beyond the usual hour. There is no one in the streets but the _serenos_, with their lantern suspended at the end of a pole, their cloak, which is of the same colour as the walls around them, and their measured cry: all that you hear besides this is a chorus of crickets singing, in their little cages decorated with small glass ornaments, their dissyllabic lament. The people of Madrid have a taste for crickets; each house has one hung up at the window in a miniature cage made of wood or wire. They have also a strange affection for quails, which they keep in open osier coops, and which vary, in a very agreeable manner, by their everlasting _pue-pue-pue_, the _crick-crick_ of the crickets. As Bilboquet remarks, those who are fond of this particular note must be highly delighted.