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 language 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 Portuguese as to disuse
the second person plural also, except in the family circle, and to
substitute the indirect phrases, _vuestra Merced_ (in Spanish) and
_vossa Merce_ (in Portuguese), both much contracted in speaking and
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 Portuguese
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 Senhoria_.--One may hear an
elderly gentleman talking to a young girl of fourteen, or, better still,
two such damsels talking together, and it is "your Excellency" at every
sentence; and the prescribed address on an envelope is _"Illustrissima
Excellentissima Senhora Dona Maria_." The lower classes have not quite
reached the "Excellency," but have got beyond the "Grace," and hence the
personal pronouns are in a state of colloquial chaos, and the only safe
way is to hold to the third person and repeat the name of Manuel or
Maria, or whatever it may be, as often as possible.
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