The next day the municipality of Madrid celebrated a royal bull-fight on a scale of magnificence rarely approached. The great Plaza Mayor of Madrid, 340 feet square, was surrounded by stagings, and every one of the hundreds of balconies of the high houses overlooking the plaza was hung with crimson silk and gold, and filled with noblemen and ladies whose names were as splendid as the clothes, of which Solo y Aguilar[4] spares us no detail. The royal balcony was erected on the first floor of the municipal bakery (still standing), {90} and must have been a mass of crimson and cloth of gold, with its hangings, its canopies, its curtains, and its balustrades. Every council and board, and under Olivares they were infinite, had its special tribune. Nobles, officials, officers, and foreign representatives, all of whose fine garb the literary quarter-master details for us until his description produces but a vague impression of sumptuous stuffs without end, smothered in bullion, arrived in procession to occupy their places as spectators or actors in the glittering show. The English visitors were accommodated in a special stand occupying the opening of the Street of Bitterness (Calle de Amargura), which gave rise to much satirical comment. When all was ready, and around the vast plaza a packed mass of bedizened humanity had assembled, the royal coaches entered and drove around the arena to the central entrance of the Queen's balcony before the bakehouse. Here Isabel alighted, dressed, we are told, like the Infanta, who accompanied her, in brown silk embroidered with gold, and covered with gems, the plumes of their jaunty toques being white and brown, sprinkled with diamonds. With them came the two Infantes, Carlos, in black velvet and gold, with diamond chains and buttons, and the boy Cardinal Infante Fernando, in the purple of his ecclesiastical rank. Behind them came scores of ladies, and then officers of the Guards, and finally a "great company of Spanish and English gentlemen, courtiers, grandees, and attendants."