Chief among these traits is dignity.  The most casual visitor is impressed by it, sometimes very much to his annoyance, whether he finds it among the unlettered muleteers of Castile, the labourers of Valencia, or the present proprietor of some little Old-World pueblo off the ordinary route.  The mayoral of the diligence in the old times, the domestic servant of to-day, the senora who happens to sell you fish, or the senor who mends your boots, all strike the same note—­an absolute incapacity for imagining that there can be any inequality between themselves and any other class, however far removed from them by the possession of wealth or education.  Wealth, in fact, counts for nothing in the way of social rank; a poor hidalgo is exactly as much respected as a rich one, and he treats his tenants, his servants, all with whom he comes in contact, as brothers of the same rank in the sight of God as himself.

Bajo el Rey ninguno is their proverb, and its signification, that “beneath the King all are equal,” is one that is shown daily in a hundred ways.  The formula with which you are expected to tell the beggars—­with whom, unfortunately, Spain is once more overrun—­that you have nothing for them, is a lesson in what someone has well called the “aristocratic democracy” of Spain:  “Pardon me, for the love of God, my brother,” or the simple Perdone me usted, using precisely the same address as you would to a duke.  It is no uncommon thing to hear two little ragged urchins, whose heads would not reach to one’s elbow, disputing vigorously in the street with a Pero no, Senor, Pero si, Senor, as they bandy their arguments.

English travellers are sometimes found grumbling because the senor who keeps a wayside posada, or even a more pretentious inn in one of the towns, does not stand, hat in hand, bowing obsequiously to the wayfarer who deigns to use the accommodation provided.

This is one of the things in which Spain, to her honour, is unchanged.  The courtesy of her people, high or low, is ingrained, and if foreign—­perhaps especially English and American—­travellers do not always find it so, the fault may oftenest be laid to their own ignorance of what is expected of them, and to what is looked upon as the absolute boorishness of their own manners.

When a Spaniard goes into a shop where a woman is behind the counter, or even to a stall in the open market, he raises his hat in speaking to her as he would to the Duquesa de Tal y Fulano, and uses precisely the same form of address.  The shopman lays himself at the feet of his lady customers—­metaphorically only, fortunately, A los pies de V., Senora!—­with a bow worthy of royalty.  She hopes that “God may remain with his worship” as she bids him the ordinary Adios on going away, and he, with equal politeness, expresses a hope that she may “go in God’s keeping,” while he once more lays himself at the senora’s feet.  All