“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.

“Moreover, if we admit that the sculptors of the thirteenth century introduced the acanthus on account of its emollient qualities, the oak because it is emblematic of strength, and the water-lily because its broad leaves are accepted as a figure of charity, we ought no less to conclude that at the end of the fifteenth century, when the mystery of symbolism was not as yet altogether lost, the toothed bunches of curled cabbage, of thistles and other deeply-cut leaves mingling with true-love-knots, as in the church at Brou, might have had some meaning.  But it is perfectly certain that these vegetable forms were chosen only for their elaborately elegant growth, and the fragile and mannered grace of their outline.  Otherwise we might assert that this later ornament has a different tale to tell from that set forth in the flora of Reims and Amiens, Rouen and Chartres.

“In point of fact, the natural form which most frequently occurs in the capitals of our cathedral—­by no means a remarkably flowery one—­is the episcopal crozier as seen in the young shoots of the fern.”