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i9i7] STATELY CEREMONIALS 501
Reminiscences that I have had to describe an audience
of reception. This may perchance astonish the reader;
but who knows whether in the near future some one
may not be grateful to me for having recounted these
Court ceremonies—ceremonies formerly considered so
all-important which have since become the continuation
of a traditional custom, now only of interest to
street-loiterers and Court circles, and which will soon fall
completely into disuse together with all the outward
show and all the pomp of the most ancient monarchies ?
Moreover, Madrid has remained the capital in which
the solemn audiences of the Ambassadors have
preserved all their grandeur and take place in a singularly
appropriate setting and according to the rites religiously
kept up since the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
I at least cannot remember any Court ceremony more
imposing and grander in its every detail than the one
held for me on my arrival in Madrid.
The procession through the streets of the capital
was really magnificent. Each of the gilded coaches was
worthy of a place in a museum and in history; I
occupied the one built for the coronation of King Joseph
(Bonaparte), which was simple in outline with the most
delightful paintings on a gold-lacquered ground. The
harness and trappings of the beautiful horses dated from
the eighteenth century; the liveries of the postilions,
heavily embroidered in gold and silver dulled by twenty
decades of wear, were of the same period; all the other
liveries have not changed in fashion since the days of
Philip V. The horses of the escort, of Arab breed with
glossy coats, were all beautiful, and admirably ridden—
Spanish riders are undoubtedly the best in the world.
The procession at last reached the Royal Palace, the
only really beautiful and majestic building in Madrid,
and entered the great courtyard where the guard of
honour was drawn up, with their colours hallowed by
warlike memories, to salute the Ambassador. In the
outer hall of the Palace members of the Royal Court
came to be presented to the Ambassador and to precede
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