perfect costume-model,--a perfect miniature of Martinique fashions, to
the smallest details of material and color: it is almost too artistic
for a toy.

[Illustration: ITINERANT PASTRY-SELLER. "Tourjours content,
Toujours joyeux."]

These old costume-colors of Martinique-always relieved by
brilliant yellow stripings or checkerings, except in the special
violet dresses worn on certain religious occasions--have an
indescribable luminosity,--a wonderful power of bringing out the
fine warm tints of this tropical flesh. Such are the hues of
those rich costumes Nature gives to her nearest of kin and her
dearest,--her honey-lovers--her insects: these are wasp-colors.
I do not know whether the fact ever occurred to the childish
fancy of this strange race; but there is a creole expression
which first suggested it to me;--in the patois, _pouend guêpe_,
"to catch a wasp," signifies making love to a pretty colored
girl. ... And the more one observes these costumes, the more one
feels that only Nature could .have taught such rare comprehension
of powers and harmonies among colors,--such knowledge of
chromatic witchcrafts and chromatic laws.

... This evening, as I write, La Pelée is more heavily coiffed
than is her wont. Of purple and lilac cloud the coiffure is,--a
magnificent Madras, yellow-banded by the sinking sun. La Pelée
is in _costume de fête_, like a _capresse_ attired for a baptism
or a ball; and in her phantom turban one great star glimmers for
a brooch.