Madrid, however, like all urban Spain, comes thoroughly to life only with the fall of night. Occasionally a special celebration carries her populace to some strange corner of the city, but the fixed rendezvous is the Paseo de Recoletos, a broader Alameda where reigns by day an un-Spanish opulence of shade enjoyed only by the chairs stacked house-high beneath the trees. There is nothing hurried about the congregating. Dinner leisurely finished, the madrileño of high or low degree begins to drift slowly thither. By nine the public benches are taken; by ten one can and must move only with the throng at the accepted pace, or pay a copper to sit in haughty state in one of the now unstacked chairs. Toward ten-thirty a military band straggles in from the four points of the compass, finishes its cigarette, languidly unlimbers its instruments, and near eleven falls to work--or play. About the same time there come wandering through the trees, as if drawn here by merest chance, five threadbare blind men, each with a battered violin or horn tucked tenderly under one arm. During the opening number they listen attentively, in silence, after the manner of musicians. Then as the official players pause to roll new cigarettes the sightless ragamuffins take their stand near at hand and strike up a music that more than one city of the western world could do worse than subsidize. Thereafter melody is incessant; and with it the murmur of countless voices, the scrape of leisurely feet on the gravel, the cries of the hawkers of all that may by any chance be sought, and louder and more insistent than all else the baying of newsboys--aged forty to sixty and of both sexes--"_El País!_" "_El Heraldo!_" "_La Cor-r-respondencia-a-a-a!_"
Midnight! Why, midnight is only late in the afternoon in Madrid. The concert does not end until three and half the babies of the city are playing in the sand along the Paseo de Recoletos when the musicians leave. Besides, what else is to be done? Even did one feel the slightest desire to turn in there is not the remotest possibility of finding one's room less than a sweatbox. The populace shows little inclination to disperse, and though many saunter unwillingly homeward for form's sake, it is not to sleep, for one may still hear chatting and the muffled twang of guitars behind the blinds of the open windows. As for myself, I drifted commonly after the concert into the "Circo Americano" or a zarzuela, though such entertainments demonstrated nothing except how easily the madrileño is amused. Yet even these close early--for Madrid; and rambling gradually into my adopted section, it was usually my fortune to run across a "friend of the house"--of whom more anon--to retire with him to the nearest _Juego de Billar_, or billiard-hall, there to play the night gray-headed.