“That is the tribune of La Pena, the fashionable club in the Alcalá,” Patsy said. “The next is the Press Club. This is the Artists’ Club, and this last is the tribune of the French Colony.”
The crowd of men, women and children in the stands were armed with flowers, huge sacks of confetti, and rolls of colored paper ribbons, which unwind when they are thrown, like rockets or lassos. In a white carriage drawn by four silver-gray mules with postilions and outriders, sat two beauties dressed in silver. Passing in the other direction was a car with a representation of Carthage. The Carthaginians were splendidly dressed. As car and carriage met, a pair of dark Carthaginian men lifted a bag of violet confetti and poured it down on the white carriage, so that we saw the beauties through a purple haze. The effect of the changing colors was dazzling. Violet, declared at Paris the color of the season, predominated over all others.
“This,” said Patsy, “is like walking through a gallery of living impressionist pictures.”
“Maestro! Ay Maestro!” we were passing the tribune of the Artists’ Club, when, bifferty! a long yellow streamer coiled about Villegas’ neck and flew out behind. Soon the landeau was hung in a maze of paper ribbons, every color of the rainbow, tangling in the wheels, wound round the hubs, filling the carriage, half strangling us. A fine victoria with a harlequin and a mask in pink satin, stopped close to us. A servant was sent to our carriage and presented Lucia with a pretty porcelaine bonbonnière of caramels. It was growing late and people began to be hungry. The flowers were exhausted; chocolates and candies hailed into the carriage. In the cab behind, Candelaria unpacked a box of sandwiches, a bottle and two glasses.
“Un poco de ginevra de campana?” said Don Jaime, offering a glass to Patsy.
“Luz, Luz, Luz!” The cry came from a box of caramels filled with young caballeros done up like bonbons in pink paper. Luz, lovely as daybreak, smiled as her carriage passed the caramels; we saw her through a storm of rosy confetti. We drove down for a last turn to the end of the Castellana.
The sunset was pink, gold and violet, to match the prevailing tone of the carnival. Against the sky the Guaderramas stood out boldly with the eternal white confetti on their summits. Our carriage halted by the statue of Isabel the Catholic, sitting on her horse between her good and her evil genius, Columbus standing at her bridle and just behind her the cowled, sinister figure of Torquemada.
“Don Alfonzo!” The young King in his automobile flew by, a dent in his bowler hat, his coat covered with confetti. He threw a bunch of roses to a señorita dressed like a strawberry, sitting in a basket of fruit, the other strawberries all answered with double handful of pinkish confetti, and cries of “muy bien!” He was supposed to be incognito and was throwing flowers and confetti just like any other jolly boy of nineteen. Of course everybody recognized him, but the fiction of the incognito was strictly respected, which seemed very sensible. It must be supposed that he needs a little fun for his soul’s sake, like the rest of us. He got his full share that afternoon.
Last of all we drove through the Alcalá, Madrid’s main artery, to the Puerta del Sol, the city’s mighty heart. The rest of Madrid sometimes sleeps a little; here the life blood pulses ceaselessly to and fro.
“I have been in the Puerta del Sol at every hour of the twenty-four,” said Patsy, “and I have never found it empty.”