.

"To have done with this emblematical jewelry, we may add that the series
of stones serves to symbolize the hierarchies of the angels. But here,
again, the meanings commonly received are derived from more or less
forced comparisons and a tissue of notions more or less flimsy and
loose. However, it is so far established that the sard-stone suggests
the Seraphim, the topaz the Cherubim, the jasper means the Thrones, the
chrysolite figures the Dominions, the sapphire the Virtues, the onyx the
Powers, the beryl the Principalities, the ruby the Archangels, and the
emerald the Angels."

"And it is a curious fact," said the Abbe Plomb, "that while beasts,
colours, and flowers are accepted by that symbolists sometimes with a
good meaning and sometimes with an evil one, gems alone never change;
they always express good qualities, and never vices."

"Why is that?"

"St. Hildegarde perhaps affords a clue to this stability when, in the
fourth book, of her treatise on Physics, she says that the Devil hates
them, abhors and scorns them, because he remembers that their splendour
shone in him before his fall, and that some of them are the product of
the fire that is his torment.

"And the saint added, 'God, who deprived him of them, would not that the
stones should lose their virtues; He desired, on the contrary, that they
should ever be held in honour, and used in medicine to the end that
sickness should be cured and ills driven out.' And, in fact, in the
Middle Ages they were highly esteemed and used to effect cures."

"To return to those early pictures," said the Abbe Gevresin, "in which
the Virgin emerges like a flower from amid the gorgeous assemblage of
gems, it may be said as a general thing, that the glow of jewels
declares by visible signs the merits of Her who wears them; but it would
be difficult to say what the painter's purpose may have been when, in
the decoration of a crown or a dress, he placed any particular stone in
one spot rather than another. It is, as a rule, a question of taste or
harmony, and has nothing, or very little, to do with symbolism."

"Of that there can be no doubt," said Durtal, who rose and took leave,
as Madame Bavoil, hearing the cathedral clock strike, handed to the two
priests their hats and breviaries.

CHAPTER VIII.

The somewhat dolefully calm frame of mind in which Durtal had been
living since settling at Chartres came to a sudden end. One day _ennui_
made him its prey, t