“Now,” said he, pointing with his stick to the plan of the nave he had traced, “here is the altar, overgrown with red-leaved vines, purple or pearly grapes, sheaves of golden corn.  Ah! but we must have a cross over the altar.”

“That will not be difficult,” replied the Abbe Gevresin.  “From the grain of mustard seed, which all the symbolists accept in a figurative sense as representing Christ, to the sycamore and the terebinth, you have a wide range; you can at pleasure have a tiny cross, a mere nothing, or a gigantic crucifix.”

“Here,” Durtal went on, “along the bays where trefoils flourish, different flowers rise from the ground, corresponding to the saints of their ascription; here is the chapel of Our Lady of the Seven Dolours, recognizable by the passion-flower full blown on its creeping stem, with its many tendrils; and the background is a hedge of reeds and rhamnus, full of sad meaning, mitigated by the compassionate myrtle.

“Here, again, is the sacristy, where smiles the soft blue flax on its light stem, the abundant flowers of the convolvulus and campanula, tall sun-flowers, and, if you choose, a palm, for I recollect that Sister Emmerich speaks of this tree as a paragon of chastity, because, she says, the male and female flowers are separate, and both kept modestly hidden.  Another interpretation to the credit of the palm!”

“But after all, you are absurd, our friend!” cried Madame Bavoil.  “All this will not hold together.  Your plants are the growth of different climates, and in any case they could not all be in bloom at the same time; consequently, by the time you have planted this, that will be dead.  You can never grow them side by side.”

“That is symbolical of many unfinished cathedrals, where the building is carried across from century to century,” said Durtal, snapping his stick.  “But listen, fancy apart, there is something which may be done, and has not been done, for celestial botany and pious posies.

“That is, to make a liturgical garden, a true Benedictine garden, where flowers may be grown in succession for the sake of their relations to the Scriptures and hagiology.  Would it not be delightful to follow out the liturgy of prayer with that of plants, to place them side by side in the sanctuary, to deck the altars with flowers all having their meanings according to the days and festivals; in short, to associate nature in its most exquisite manifestation—­that is, its flowers—­with the ceremonies of divine worship?”

“Yes, indeed!” exclaimed both the priests with one accord.

“Meanwhile, till these fine things are accomplished, I will be content to dig in my little kitchen garden with an eye to the savoury stews in which you shall share,” said Madame Bavoil.  “There I am in my element; I do not lose my footing as I do in your imitation churches.”

“And I, on my part, will meditate on the symbolism of eatables,” said Durtal, taking out his watch.  “It is near breakfast time.”