Page:Life in Mexico vol 2.djvu/388

368 The same evening, we visited a lady who possesses a most singular and curious collection of works in wax; and more extraordinary still, they are all her own workmanship. Every fruit and every vegetable production is represented by her with a fidelity, which makes it impossible to distinguish between her imitation and the works of nature. Plates with bread, radishes and fish; dishes of fowls, and chile, and eggs; baskets full of the most delicious looking fruit; lettuces, beans, carrots, tomatoes, &c.; all are copied with the most extraordinary exactness. But her figures show much greater talent. There are groups for which an amateur might offer any price, could she be prevailed upon to offer these master-pieces for sale. There is a Poblana peasant on horseback before a ranchero, looking back at him with the most coquettish expression; her dress perfection, from the straw hat that half shades her features, to the beautiful little ankle and foot in the white satin shoe, the short embroidered petticoat, and the reboso thrown over one shoulder; a handsome Indian, selling pulque and brandy in her little shop, with every variety of liquor temptingly displayed in rows of shining bottles, to her customers; the grouping and coloring perfect, and the whole interior arrangement of the shop, imitated with the most perfect exactness. There is also a horrid representation, frightfully correct, of a dead body in a state of corruption, which it makes one sick to look at, and which it is inconceivable that any one can have had pleasure in executing. In short, there is scarcely anything in nature upon which her talent has not exercised itself.