she has only to
stoop over it."

"What nonsense!" exclaimed the old priest.

His housekeeper, quite scared, stood looking at the ground.

"Do not listen to him, Madame Bavoil," cried Durtal. "I have a less
medical, and more religious, idea: cultivate a liturgical garden and
emblematic vegetables; make a kitchen and flower garden that may set
forth the glory of God and carry up our prayers in their language; and,
in short, imitate the purpose of the Song of the Three Holy Children in
the fiery furnace, when they called on all Nature, from the breath of
the storm to the seed buried in the field, to Bless the Lord!"

"Very good!" exclaimed the Abbe Plomb; "but you must have a wide space
at your disposal, for not less than one hundred and thirty plants are
mentioned in the Scriptures; and the number of those to which mediaeval
writers give a meaning is immense."

"To say nothing of the fact," observed the Abbe Gevresin, "that a garden
dependent on our cathedral ought also to reproduce the botany of its
architecture."

"Is it known?"

"A list has not indeed been written for Chartres as it has been for
Reims of its sculptured flora: the botany in stone of the church of
Notre Dame there, has been carefully classified and labelled by Monsieur
Saubinet; still, you will observe that the posies of the capitals are
much the same everywhere. In all the churches of the thirteenth century
you will find the leaves of the vine, the oak, the rose-tree, the ivy,
the willow, the laurel, and the bracken, with strawberry and buttercup
leaves. Indeed, as a rule, the image-makers selected native plants
characteristic of the region where they were employed."

"Did they intend to express any particular idea by the capitals and
corbels of the columns?--At Amiens, for instance, there is a wreath of
flowers and foliage forming the string-course above the arches of the
nave for its whole length and continued over the cornice of the pillars.
Apart from the probable purpose of dividing the height into two equal
parts in order to rest the eye, has this string-course any other
meaning? Does it embody any particular idea? Is it the expression of
some phrase relating to the Virgin, in whose name the cathedral is
dedicated?"

"I do not think so," said the Abbe. "I believe that the artist who
carved those wreaths simply aimed at a decorative effect, and made no
attempt to give us in symbolical language a compendium of our Mother's
virtues.

"M