He was indeed ridiculous, for he remarked then for the first time that it was exactly what she was doing. Before her was the design he had made, but tinted with water-colours, touched up with gold, with all the delicacy of an old miniature, a little softened, like what one sees in some prayer books of the fifteenth century. And she copied this image with the patience and the skill of an artist working with a magnifying glass. After having reproduced it with rather heavy strokes upon the white silk, tightly stretched and lined with heavy linen, she covered this silk with threads of gold carried from the bottom to the top, fastened simply at the two ends, so that they were left free and close to each other. When using the same threads as a woof, she separated them with the point of her needle to find the design below. She followed this same drawing, recovered the gold threads with stitches of silk across, which she assorted according to the colours of the model. In the shaded parts the silk completely hid the gold; in the half-lights the stitches of silk were farther and farther apart, while the real lights were made by gold alone, entirely uncovered. It was thus the shaded gold, that most beautiful of all work, the foundation being modified by the silks, making a picture of mellow colours as if warmed from beneath by a glory and a mystic light. “Oh!” suddenly said Hubert, who began to stretch out the banner by separating with his fingers the cords of the trellis, “the masterpiece of a woman who embroidered in the olden time was always in this difficult work. To become a member of the Corporation she had to make, as it is written in the statutes, a figure by itself in shaded gold, a sixth part as tall as if life-size. You would have been received, my Angelique.” Again there was an unbroken silence. Felicien watched her constantly, as she stooped forward, absorbed in her task, quite as if she were entirely alone. For the hair of the saint, contrary to the general rule, she had had the same idea as he; that was, to use no silk, but to re-cover gold with gold, and she kept ten needles at work with this brilliant thread of all shades, from the dark red of dying embers, to the pale, delicate yellow tint of the leaves of the forest trees in the autumn. Agnes was thus covered from her neck to her ankles with a stream of golden hair. It began at the back of her head, covered her body with a thick mantle, flowed in front of her from the shoulders in two waves which united under the chin, and fell down to her feet in one wavy sheet. It was, indeed, the miraculous hair, a fabulous fleece, with heavy twists and curls, a glorious, starry efflorescence, the warm and living robe of a saint, perfumed with its pure nudity.