This, however, is the Spanish tertulia.  You are “offered the house” once and for always, and told the evenings on which your hostess “receives,” generally once, sometimes many more times in the week; then you drop in, without further invitation, whenever you feel inclined; after the opera, or on the days when there is no opera, or on your way from the theatre, or at any hour.  This sort of visiting puts an end to what we, by courtesy, call “morning calls.”  There is always conversation to any amount, generally cards, music, and, when there are sufficient young people, a dance.

There is no exclusiveness and no caste about Spanish society; all the houses are open, and the guests are always welcome.  There are, of course, the houses of the nobility, and there are many grades in this Grandeza, some being of very recent creation, others of the uncontaminated sangre azul; but there is no hard-and-fast line.  The successful politician or the popular writer has the entree anywhere, and there is no difficulty about going into the very best of the Court society, if one has friends in that tertulia.  One guest asks permission to present his or her friend, the permission is courteously granted, and the thing is done.  Poets and dramatists are in great request in Madrid society.  It is the custom to ask them to recite their own compositions, and as almost every Spaniard is a poet, whatever else he may be, there is no lack of entertainment.  All the popular authors—­Campoamor, Nunez de Arce, Pelayo, Valera, and many others—­may thus be heard; but the paid performer (so common in London drawing-rooms) of music, light drama, or poetical recitation, is probably absolutely unknown in Madrid society.

During the season balls are given occasionally at the Palace, and at the houses of the great nobility, the Fernan-Nunez, the Romana, the Medinaceli, and others, whose names are as well known in Paris and London as in Madrid.  Dinner-parties are also becoming much more common in private houses than they were before the Restoration, and as for public dinners, they are so frequent that they bid fair to become of the same importance as the like institution in England.  Costume balls, dances, dinners, and evening entertainments among the corps diplomatique abound.  Everyone in Madrid has a box or stall at the Teatro Real, or opera-house, and many ladies make a practice of “receiving” in their palcos; and in the entrance-hall, after the performance is over, an hour may be spent, while ostensibly waiting for carriages, in conversation, gossip, mild flirtation, and generally making one’s self agreeable among the groups all engaged in the same amusement.  Almost everyone, also, whatever his means may be, has an abono at one or other of the numerous theatres, sometimes at more than one; and if it be a box, the subscribers take friends with them, or receive visits there.  It is a common thing, either in the opera-house or in the theatres,