“Here is another question,” the Abbe Plomb went on.  “In the earliest religious pictures the cloaks in which the Virgin, the Apostles, and the Saints are draped almost always show the hue of their lining in ingeniously contrived folds.  It is of course different from that of the outer side, as you yourself observed just now with regard to the mantle of Saint Agnes in Angelico’s work.  Now, do you suppose that, apart from contrast of colour selected for technical purposes, the monk meant to express any particular idea by the juxtaposition of the two colours?”

“In accordance with the symbolism of the palette the outer colour would represent the material creature, and the lining colour the spiritual being.”

“Well, but then what is the significance of Saint Agnes’ mantle of green lined with orange?”

“Obviously,” replied Durtal, “green denoting freshness of feeling, the essence of good, hope; and orange, in its better meaning, being regarded as representing the act by which God unites Himself to man, we might conclude from these data that Saint Agnes had attained the life of union, the possession of the Saviour, by virtue of her innocence and the fervour of her aspirations.  She would thus be the image of virtue yearning and fulfilled, of hope rewarded, in short.

“But now I must confess that there are many gaps, many obscurities in this allegorical lore of colours.  In the picture in the Louvre, for instance, the steps of the throne, which are intended to play the part of veined marble, remain unintelligible.  Splashed with dull red, acrid green, and bilious yellow, what do these steps express, suggesting as they do by their number the nine choirs of angels?”

“It seems to me difficult to allow that the monk intended to figure the celestial hierarchies by smears with a dirty brush and these crude streaks.”

“But has the colour of a step ever represented an idea in the science of symbolism?” asked the Abbe Gevresin.

“Saint Mechtildis says so.  When speaking of the three steps in front of the altar, she propounds that the first should be of gold, to show that it is impossible to go to God save by charity; the second blue, to signify meditation on things divine; the third green, to show eager hope and praise of Heavenly things.”

“Bless me!” cried Madame Bavoil, who was getting somewhat scared by this discussion, “I never saw it in that light.  I know that red means fire, as everybody knows; blue, the air; green, water; and black, the earth.  And this I understand, because each element is shown in its true colour; but I should never have dreamed that it was so complicated, never have supposed that there was so much meaning in painters’ pictures.”

“In some painters’!” cried Durtal.  “For since the Middle Ages the doctrine of emblematic colouring is extinct.  At the present day those painters who attempt religious subjects are ignorant of the first elements of the symbolism of colours, just as modern architects are ignorant of the first principles of mystical theology as embodied in buildings.”