his clumsy and ferocious personage bore a
green palm and a book.

Durtal turned away to sound the depths of darkness, and before him, at a
giddy height on the horizon, more sword-blades gleamed. The scrawls
which might have been mistaken in the darkness for patterns embossed or
incised on the surface of the steel, developed into figures draped in
long, straight, pleated robes; and at the highest point of the firmament
there hovered amid a sparkle of rubies and sapphires a woman crowned,
pale of face, dressed like the Moorish mother of the northern side in
Carmelite-brown and green; and she too held an infant, a child, like
herself, of the white race, clasping a globe in one hand, and extending
the other in benediction.

Last of all, the still dark side, the late side, to Durtal's right hand
and further south, till now wrapped in the half-dispelled morning haze,
was lighted up; the shield opposite to that on the north caught the
blaze, and below it, against the polished metal of the broad blade
facing that which presented the negress queen, appeared a woman of
somewhat olive hue, in raiment like the others, of myrtle-green and
brown, holding a sceptre, and with her, too, there was a child. And
round her again emerged images of men piled up one above the other,
shouldering each other in the narrow field they filled.

For a quarter of an hour nothing was clearly defined; then the real
things asserted themselves. In the middle of the swords, which were in
fact mosaic of glass, the figures stood out in broad daylight. In the
field of each window with its pointed arch bearded faces took form,
motionless in the midst of fire; and on all sides, in the thicket of
flames, as it were the burning bush of Horeb where God showed His glory
to Moses, the Virgin was seen in an unchangeable attitude of imperious
sweetness and pensive grace, mute and still, and crowned with gold.

She was, indeed, many; She came down from the empyrean to lower levels,
to be closer to Her flock, and at last found a place where they might
almost kiss Her feet, at the corner of an aisle that was always in
gloom; but there She wore a different aspect.

She stood forth in the middle of a window, like a tall, blue plant, and
the garnet-red foliage was supported by black iron rods.

Her colour was slightly coppery, almost Chinese, with a long nose and
rather narrow eyes; on the head there was a black coif, and She looked
steadily before Her, while the lowe