“H’m!” said Durtal; “the rose has been much bedraggled.  Not only was it the erotic blossom of Paganism, but in the Middle Ages Jews and prostitutes were compelled in many places to wear a rose as a distinctive mark of infamy.”

“True,” said the Abbe Plomb, “and yet Peter of Capua uses it, with an interpretation of love and charity, to figure the Virgin; Saint Mechtildis, again, says that roses are symbolical of martyrs, and in another passage of her work on ‘Specific Grace,’ she compares this flower to the virtue of patience.”

“Walafrid Strabo, in his ‘Hortulus,’ also speaks of the rose as the blood of the martyred saints,” the Abbe Gevresin murmured.

“‘Rosae martyres, rubore sanguinis,’ according to the key of Saint Melito,” the other priest added, in confirmation.

“We will admit that shrub,” cried Durtal.  “Now for the lily—­”

“Here I must interrupt you,” exclaimed the Abbe Plomb, “for it must be at once understood that the lily of the Scriptures has nothing to do with the flower we know by that name.

“The common white lily which grows in Europe, and which even before the Middle Ages was regarded by the Church as emblematic of virginity, does not seem to have existed in Palestine; and when, in the Song of Songs, the mouth of the Beloved is compared to a lily, it is evidently not in praise of white, but of red lips.  The plant spoken of in the Bible as the lily of the valleys, or the lily of the fields, is neither more nor less than the anemone.

“This is proved by the Abbe Vigouroux.  It abounds in Syria, round Jerusalem, in Galilee, on the Mount of Olives; rising from a tuft of deeply-cut, alternate leaves of a rich, dull green, the flower cup is like a delicate and refined poppy; it has the air of a patrician among flowers, of a little Infanta, fresh and innocent in her gorgeous attire.”

“It is certainly the fact,” observed Durtal, “that the innocence of the lily is far from obvious, for its scent, when you think of it, is anything rather than chaste.  It is a mingling of honey and pepper, at once acrid and mawkish, pallid but piercing; it is suggestive rather of the aphrodisiac conserves of the East and the erotic sweetmeats of the Indies.”

“But, after all,” said the Abbe Gevresin, “granting that there never were lilies in the Holy Land—­but is it so?—­it is none the less certain that a whole series of symbols were derived from this plant both by the ancients and in mediaeval times.

“Look, for instance, at Origen; to him the lily is Christ, for Our Lord alluded to Himself when He said, ’I am the flower of the field and the lily of the valley;’ and in these words, the field, meaning tilled land, represents the Hebrew people, taught by God Himself, while the valleys or fallow land are the ignorant, or, in other words, the heathen.

“Again, turn to Peter Cantor.  According to him, the lily is the Virgin, by reason of its whiteness, of its perfume delectable above all others, of its healing virtues; and finally, because it grows in uncultivated ground, as the Virgin was born of Jewish parents.”