ose sisters were habited in grey, white, and red,
the colours of the Passion, and they also wore a blue cape and a black
veil in memory of Our Mother's mourning."

"The image of a perpetual Holy Week!" exclaimed Durtal.

"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