In The Burgher Society Of Castile This Night Is Devoted To A Very
Different Ceremony.
Each little social circle comes together in a house
agreed upon.
They take mottoes of gilded paper and write on each the
name of some one of the company. The names of the ladies are thrown into
one urn, and those of the cavaliers into another, and they are drawn out
by pairs. These couples are thus condemned by fortune to intimacy during
the year. The gentleman is always to be at the orders of the dame and to
serve her faithfully in every knightly fashion. He has all the duties
and none of the privileges of a lover, unless it be the joy of those
"who stand and wait." The relation is very like that which so astonished
M. de Gramont in his visit to Piedmont, where the cavalier of service
never left his mistress in public and never approached her in private.
The true Carnival survives in its naive purity only in Spain. It has
faded in Rome into a romping day of clown's play. In Paris it is little
more than a busier season for dreary and professional vice. Elsewhere
all over the world the Carnival gayeties are confined to the salon. But
in Madrid the whole city, from grandee to cordwainer, goes with
childlike earnestness into the enjoyment of the hour. The Corso begins
in the Prado on the last Sunday before Lent, and lasts four days. From
noon to night the great drive is filled with a double line of carriages
two miles long, and between them are the landaus of the favored hundreds
who have the privilege of driving up and down free from the law of the
road.
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