There is, indeed, a table of the harmony of gems and their application to patriarchs, apostles, and virtues, drawn up by Madame Felicie d'Ayzac, who has written an elaborate paper on the figurative meaning of gems." "The avatar of some other Scriptural personages might be equally well carried out by these emblematical minerals," observed the Abbe Gevresin.
"Obviously; and as I warned you, the analogies are very far-fetched.

The hermeneutics of gems are uncertain, and founded on mere fanciful resemblances, on the harmonies of ideas hard to assimilate.

In mediaeval times this science was principally cultivated by poets." "Against whom we must be on our guard," said the Abbe Plomb, "since their interpretations are for the most part heathenish.

Marbode, for example, though he was a Bishop, has left us but a very pagan interpretation of the language of gems." "These mystical lapidaries have on the whole chiefly applied, their ingenuity to explaining the stones of the breastplate of Aaron, and those that shine in the foundations of the New Jerusalem, as described by St.John; indeed, the walls of Sion are set with the same jewels as the High Priest's pectoral, with the exception of the carbuncle, the ligure, agate, and onyx, which are named in Exodus, and replaced in the Book of Revelation by chalcedony, sardonyx, chrysoprase, and jacinth." "Yes, and the symbolist goldsmiths wrought diadems, setting them with precious stones, to crown Our Lady's brow; but their poems showed little variety, for they were all borrowed from the _Libellus Corona Virginis_, an apocryphal work ascribed to St.Ildefonso, and formerly famous in convents." The Abbe Gevresin rose and took an old book from the shelf.
"That brings to my mind," said he, "a hymn in honour of the Virgin composed in rhyme by Conrad of Haimburg, a German monk in the fourteenth century.

Imagine," he continued, as he turned over the pages, "a litany of gems, each verse symbolizing one of Our Mother's virtues.
"This prayer in minerals opens with a human greeting.