simple.  Your admission to the house guaranties you as a proper acquaintance, there are no introductions, and you may address any one in any language you can coin into a sentence.  Many speak French, and two or three English,—­sometimes with an odd mingling of dialects, as when the Military Governor answered my inquiry, made in timid Portuguese, as to how long he had served in the army. "Vinte-cinco annos," he answered, in the same language; then, with an effort after an unexceptionable translation, “Vat you call, Twenty-cinq year”!

The great obstacle to the dialogue soon becomes, however, a deficit of subjects rather than of words.  Most of these ladies never go out except to mass and to parties, they never read, and if one of them has some knowledge of geography, it is quite an extended education; so that, when you have asked them if they have ever been to St. Michael, and they have answered, Yes,—­or to Lisbon, and they have answered, No,—­then social intercourse rather flags.  I gladly record, however, that there were some remarkable exceptions to this, and that we found in the family of the late eminent Portuguese statesman, Mousinho d’Albuquerque, accomplishments and knowledge which made their acquaintance an honor.

During the intervals of the dancing, little trays of tea and of cakes are repeatedly carried round,—­astonishing cakes, in every gradation of insipidity, with the oddest names:  white poison, nuns’ kisses, angels’ crops, cats’ tails, heavenly bacon, royal eggs, coruscations, cocked hats, and esquecidos, or oblivion cakes, the butter being omitted.  It seems an unexpected symbol of the plaintive melancholy of the Portuguese character that the small confections which we call kisses they call sighs, suspiros.  As night advances, the cakes grow sweeter and the dances livelier, and the pretty national dances are at last introduced; though these are never seen to such advantage as when the peasants perform them on a Saturday or Sunday evening to the monotonous strain of a viola, the musician himself taking part in the complicated dance, and all the men chanting the refrain.  Nevertheless they add to the gayety of our genteel entertainment, and you may stay at the party as long as you have patience,—­if till four in the morning, so much the better for your popularity; for, though the gathering consist of but thirty people, they like to make the most of it.

Perhaps the next day one of these new friends kindly sends in a present for the ladies of the party:  a bouquet of natural flowers with the petals carefully gilded; a folar or Easter cake, being a large loaf of sweetened bread, baked in a ring, and having whole eggs, shell and all, in the midst of it.  One lady of our acquaintance received a pretty basket, which being opened revealed two little Portuguese pigs, about eight inches long, snow-white, wearing blue ribbons round their necks and scented with cologne.