ABSTRACT
Here’s a general rejoicing since the arrival of the Marquis de los Balbaces, who brought certain news that the most Christian King had granted Mademoiselle to the King of Spain. He so impatiently expected these tidings that there was hardly an hour passed that he did not ask if the courier was not come; and as soon as he knew it, he immediately went to hear Te Deum. at our Lady d’Atocha’s Church. As the ladies do not go thither, so they are to content to dress themselves very fine and place themselves in their windows. I chose this, and I thought I should have been both choked and blinded, it was so excessive dusty. I saw the King in his coach of green oilcloth; he had but a small attendance, for some twenty halberdiers clothed in yellow with trussed breeches like the pages, made up his guard, marching before and behind him. The courtiers’ coaches, indeed, that accompanied him, were so numerous that they could hardly be told; the people everywhere crowding, even to the tops of the houses, cried out Viva el Rey, Dios le Bendiga, and several added, Viva la Reina nuestra Seiñora. There was not the least house or street without its spread tables; everybody had their garlick, leeks, and onions in their hands, insomuch that they perfumed the air with them, and they were even debauched with drinking their Majesty’s health in water. For, dear Cousin, though I have already mentioned it to you, yet methinks I may repeat it here, that there never was people so temperate as these, especially in wine. And they have so srange an abhorrence for those that are guilty of intemperance that by their law a man that can be proved but once to have been drunk is refused for being a witness in any court of justice where he is offered, and after a sharp reproof is sent away. And if it happens that one calls another boracho, that is, drunkard, this injury is sure to be revenged with murder.
