FAYAL AND THE PORTUGUESE 301 
saints. This is San Antonio, and that is Nossa 
Senhora do Conceig&o, Our Lady of the Con- 
ception. She prays to them every day for sun- 
shine ; but they do not seem to hear, this win- 
ter, she says, and it rains all the time. Then, 
approaching the climax of her blessedness, with 
beaming face she opens a door in the wall, and 
shows you her pig. 
The courtesy of the higher classes tends to 
formalism, and has stamped itself on the lan- 
guage in some very odd ways. The tendency 
common to all tongues, towards a disuse of 
the second person singular, as too blunt and 
familiar, is carried so far in Spanish and Portu- 
guese as to disuse the second person plural 
also, except in the family circle, and to substi- 
tute the indirect phrases, vuestra Merced (in 
Spanish) and vossa Mercé (in Portuguese), both 
much contracted in speaking and in familiar 
writing, and both signifying “your Grace.” The 
joke of invariably applying this epithet to one’s 
valet would seem sufficiently grotesque in either 
language, and here the Spanish stops; but Por- 
tuguese propriety has gone so far that even 
this phrase has become too hackneyed to be 
civil, In talking with your equals, it would 
be held an insult to call them simply “your 
Grace ;” it must be some phrase still more 
courtly, — vossa Excellencia, or vossa Senhorta. 
