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The time for visiting is in the evening, when there are numbers of impromptu conversaziones or tertulias, as they are called of which the Dons are very fond, and in which very many of their evenings are passed.
Women of the greatest delicacy, suspected of sympathy with nationalistic ideals, were thrown into the filthy pens of town prostitutes. Everywhere a limitless system of espionage was combating the gathering of circles, tertulias, for the planning of a Cuba liberated from a bloody and intolerable tyranny. Were these men, Charles pressed his query, really as young as himself?
And yet the "only court" held its tertulias, and the doñas talked millinery, and bald politicians sighed for a snug post in the Philippines, and the gambling-tables and the bull-ring retained their spell upon the community. It was the old story: Rome was on the verge of ruin, and the senate of Tiberius discussed a new sauce for turbot.
As for the ladies, many of them might be taken for princesses in summer, but their winter tertulias are on a level with a porter's lodge where they play julepe. It is a card game, but the word means dose, and Madame Recamier would have fainted at the mention of it. When I observe these parvenus' attempts to shine, I think to myself: "The ostentation of the freshman year at college.
The frequent holidays afford them an outlet, and indoors they constantly see their friends and kindred at their tertulias. The land is in large holdings which are managed by the factors or agents of the noble proprietors. These, when they are not at Madrid, are to be found at their clubs, where their business men bring them papers to be signed, often unread.
This we did not do, and their gratitude enabled our officers to pass their time somewhat agreeably. The gay round that always succeeds a battle for dead comrades are soon forgotten amidst congratulations and new titles had no fascination for me. The balls, the tertulias, the dias de campo, were alike insipid and tiresome. She was not there and where? I knew not. I might never see her again.
At the tertulias his mother attended evenings in his company, it was enough for him to recite a fable or get off some piece of learning characteristic of a studious child eager to bring his school work into the conversation, for the women to rush upon him and smother him with kisses. "But how much that child knows!... How brilliant he is!"
In Lima the tertulias, or chit-chat parties, and even the gaiety of the public promenade, had almost disappeared, and quando se acabara esto? 'When will this end? was constantly ejaculated. "In Santiago every scene was reversed. Mirth and gaiety presided at paseos, confidence and frankness at the daily tertulias.
In these tertulias the grandmother was the principal spokeswoman, and astonished my ears with wonderful tales of the Land of the Moors, prison escapes, thievish feats, and one or two poisoning adventures, in which she had been engaged, as she informed me, in her early youth.
I have seen a proconsul of Prim talking with a Carlist leader, and a fiery young democrat dancing with a countess of Castile. But there is another phase of society in Madrid which is altogether pleasing, far from the domain of politics or public affairs, where there is no pretension or luxury or conspiracy, the old-fashioned Tertulias of Spain.
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