"At Cluny, again, three priests or three deacons, fasting after the above-mentioned services of prayer, put on albs and invited the aid of certain lay brethren. They mixed the flour of wheat that had been sifted by the novices, grain by grain, with a due quantity of water; and a monk wearing gloves baked the wafers one by one over a large fire of brushwood, in an iron mould stamped with the proper symbols."
"That reminds me," said Durtal, as he lighted a cigarette, "of the mill for grinding the wheat for the offering."
"
I am familiar with the mystical wine-press which was often represented by the glass-workers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries," said the Abbé Gévresin. "That was practically a paraphrase of Isaiah's prophetic verse: 'I have trodden the wine-press alone, and there was no man with me'; but the mystic mill is, I own, unknown to me."
"I have seen it once at Berne, in a window of the fifteenth century," said the Abbé Plomb.
"I also saw it in the cathedral at Erfurt, painted, not on glass, but on a panel. The picture is by no known painter, and dated 1534. I can see it now: Above, God the Father, a good old man with a snowy beard, solemn and thoughtful; and the mill, like a coffee mill, fixed on the edge of a table, with the drawer open below. The evangelical beasts are emptying into the hopper, skins full of scrolls on which are written the effective Sacramental words. These scrolls are swallowed in the body of the machine, and come out into the drawer, thence falling into a chalice held by a Cardinal and Bishop kneeling at the table.
"And the texts are changed into a little Child in the act of blessing while the four Evangelists turn a long silver crank in the right-hand corner of the panel."
"What seems strange," remarked the Abbé Gévresin, "is that it should be the formula of Transubstantiation and not the substance that is changed, and that the Evangelists, twice represented—under their animal and their human aspect—pour into the mill and grind. And also that the sacred oblation should be represented by the living flesh.
"Still, it is correct; since the consecrating words are uttered, the bread has ceased to be. This scheme of implied meaning, though somewhat strange, in a literal presentment, a scene of actual grinding—the wheat in the grain, in flour, and in the Host—this obvious intention of ignoring the species, the appearances, and substituting the reality which is invisible to sense, must have been adopted by the painter in order to appeal to the masses, to bear witness to the certainty of the Miracle and to make the mystery evident to the people. But let us return to the construction of our church. Where were we?"
"Here," said Durtal, pointing with his stick to the side aisles as traced in the sand. "Now, to represent the side chapels we have a choice. One we shall dedicate, of course,