OF SIX MEDIÆVAL WOMEN
across a ship into which he enters, and which by unseen means carries him to the desired haven. As we read the description of the ship, our thoughts at once revert to the picture of the barge in which Cleopatra goes to meet Antony. Marie tells us that the fittings are of ebony, and the unfurled sail of silk. Amid the vessel is a bed on to which the wounded knight sinks in anguish. This is of cypress and white ivory inlaid with gold, the quilt of silk and gold tissue, and the coverlet of sable lined with Alexandrian purple.[1] All this we might regard as merely a poet's fancy were it not that we go on to read that there were set two candlesticks of fine gold with lighted tapers. Here we have the clue. Doubtless the ship, a favourite theme of Christian symbolism, and one which delighted poets and painters and workers in mosaic alike, represented the Church. It is not to be necessarily inferred that Marie, when giving her hero so rare a means of transit, had in her mind all the elaborate symbolism connected with it; but she had probably read or heard tell of it, and made use of it simply for the enhancement of her story. It is in such ways that we find mysteries embedded, the real significance of them being lost or misunderstood or unheeded, just as the Renaissance painters, without any knowledge of Arabic characters, and solely on account of the ornamental quality of the
- ↑ Compare with this the bed of "King Fisherman" described in Holy Grail, vol. i. p. 137, trans. Sebastian Evans, 1898.
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