“And the monk ends his petition by saying:  ’This little ring, set with gems, which we offer Thee as at this time, accept, glorious Bride, in Thy benevolence.  Amen.’”

“It would no doubt be possible,” said the Abbe Plomb, “to reproduce almost exactly the invocations of these Litanies by each stone thus interpreted.”  And he reopened the book his friend the priest had just closed.

“See,” he went on, “how close is the concordance between the epithets in the sentences and the quality assigned to the gems.

“Does not the emerald, which in this sequence is emblematical of incorruptible purity, reflect in the sparkling mirror of its water the Mater Purissima of the Litanies to the Virgin?  Is not the chrysolite, the symbol of wisdom, a very exact image of the Sedes Sapientiae?  The jacinth, attribute of charity and succour vouchsafed to sinners, is appropriate to the Auxilium Christianorum and the refugium peccatorum of the prayers.  Is not the diamond, which means strength and patience, the Virgo potens?—­the carbuncle, meaning fame, the Virgo praedicanda?—­the chrysoprase, for fervour, the Vas insigne devotionis?

“And it is probable,” said the Abbe, in conclusion, as he laid the book down, “that if we took the trouble we could rediscover one by one, in this rosary of stones, the whole rosary of praise which we tell in honour of Our Mother.”

“Above all,” remarked Durtal, “if we did not restrict ourselves to the narrow limits of this poem, for Conrad’s manual is brief, and his dictionary of analogies small; if we accepted the interpretations of other symbolists, we could produce a ring similar to his and yet quite different, for the language of the gems would not be the same.  Thus to St. Bruno of Asti, the venerable Abbot of Monte Cassino, the jasper symbolizes Our Lord, because it is immutably green, eternal without possibility of change; and for the same reason the emerald is the image of the life of the righteous; the chrysoprase means good works; the diamond, infrangible souls; the sardonyx, which resembles the blood-stained seed of a pomegranate, is charity; the jacinth, with its varying blue, is the prudence of the saints; the beryl, whose hue is that of water running in the sunshine, figures the Scriptures elucidated by Christ; the chrysolite, attention and patience, because it has the colour of the gold that mingles in it and lends it its meaning; the amethyst, the choir of children and virgins, because the blue mixed in it with rose pink suggests the idea of innocence and modesty.

“Or, again, if we borrow from Pope Innocent III. his ideas as to the mystical meanings of gems, we find that chalcedony, which is pale in the light and sparkles in the dark, is synonymous with humility; the topaz with chastity and the merit of good works, while the chrysoprase, the queen of minerals, implies wisdom and watchfulness.

“If we do not go quite so far back into past ages, but stop at the end of the sixteenth century, we find some new interpretations in a Commentary on the Book of Exodus by Corneille de la Pierre; for he ascribes truth to the onyx and carbuncle, heroism to the beryl, and to the ligure, with its delicate and sparkling violet hue, scorn of the things of earth, and love of heavenly things.”