“All this, however, is of no great interest, and I cannot help wondering what meaning can have been attributed to cutting capers and spinning round.  I find it difficult to believe that farandoles and boleros could ever represent prayer; I can hardly persuade myself that it can be an act of thanksgiving to trample peppers under foot or appearing to grind at an imaginary coffee-mill with one’s arms.

“In point of fact no one knows anything about the symbolism of dancing; no record has come down to us of the meanings ascribed to it of old.  Church dancing is really no more than a gross form of rejoicing among Southern races.  We need mention it merely as noteworthy, and that is all.

“Now, from a practical point of view, what has the influence of symbolism been on souls?”

Durtal could answer himself.

“The Middle Ages, knowing that everything on earth is a sign and a figure, that the only value of things visible is in so far as they correspond to things invisible—­the Middle Ages, when consequently men were not, as we are, the dupes of appearances—­made a profound study of this science, and made it the nursing mother and the handmaid of mysticism.

“Convinced that the only aim that it was incumbent on man to follow, the only end he could really need, was to place himself in direct communication with Heaven, and to out-strip death by merging himself, unifying himself to the utmost, with God, it tempted souls, subjecting them to a moderate claustral course, purged them of their earthly interests, their fleshly aims, and led them back again and again to the same purpose of renunciation and repentance, the same ideas of justice and love; and then to retain them, to preserve them from themselves, it enclosed them in a fence, placed God all about them, as it were, under every form and aspect.”

Jesus was seen in everything—­in the fauna, the flora, the structure of buildings, in every decoration, in the use of colour.  Whichever way man could turn, he still saw Him.

And at the same time he saw his own soul as in a mirror that reflected it; in certain animals, certain colours, and certain plants he could discern the qualities which it was his duty to acquire, the vices against which he had to defend himself.

And he had other examples before his eyes, for the symbolists did not restrict themselves to turning botany, mineralogy, natural history, and other sciences to the uses of a catechism; some of them, and among others Saint Melito, ended by applying the process to the interpretation of every object that came in their way.  A cithara was to them the breast of the devout man; the members of the human frame became emblematical:  the head was Christ, the hairs were the saints, the nose meant discretion, the nostrils the spirit of faith, the eye contemplation, the mouth symbolized temptation, the saliva was the sweetness of the inner life, the ears figured obedience, the