We bought all the books on the subject we could find, and studied them for hours. We cut out reproductions of historic portraits and invested largely in photos in the different art galleries we haunted, and pasted them into scrap books. Caps and headdresses have always interested me intensely. The one I wear in "Meistersinger" I copied from a portrait in Antwerp. The Norwegian one I wear as _Mary_ in "Fliegender Hollaender" I bought in Norway, together with the rest of my costume. Nothing gives such character to a silhouette as a characteristic head, and having to do endless old women, I could give them all just as endless changes of headgear. A comparison of the photos will also show how one grows into the rôle with years of playing, and how one's eyes "come to," how one develops histrionically--how the silhouette acquires snap and vim and carrying power at a distance, and outlines become crisp and authoritative. My first _Carmen_ clothes were very _Opéra Comique_ and not at all Spanish gipsy. I studied the Spanish cigarette girls and those of gipsy blood as carefully as possible, and my idea of the rôle changed naturally. I went to Muelle one summer, and told her that I was no longer happy in satin princess dresses. She said that Zuloaga had just designed and superintended the making of Breval's clothes for the _Comique's_ real Spanish revival of _Carmen_. She could duplicate these for me as she knew just where to send in Spain for the flowered cottons in garish colours, and the shot silk scarfs that Zuloaga had imported for Breval. I was delighted at this and adapted the costumes to my needs, using the last one exactly as Zuloaga had intended, with the huge red comb, made specially in Spain. When I sang _Carmen_ before Prince Henry of Prussia in Darmstadt, he sent word to me that my skirts were too long, no Spanish woman wore them so long. I knew, however, that they were the right length, and any one can see by studying Zuloaga's paintings that the soubrette length skirt is not worn on the proud, swinging hips of the Spanish girl. I have been told by Spaniards that I am an exact reproduction of a Spanish gipsy as _Carmen_, which shows my studies were not in vain. People have said that Merimée's and Bizet's _Carmen_ is not Spanish, and perhaps they are right; but in aiming to portray a Spaniard, what model can one take but a real one? My _Orfeo_ clothes I have never changed. The _crêpe de chine_ for them was imported by Mounet-Sully for one of his characters, and Muelle gave me the piece that was left over. Its beautiful creamy colour and thick softness cannot be improved upon, to my mind.