Moths, say some, do not devour old tapestries. The reason given is that the ancient wool is so desiccated as to be no longer nutritious. A pretty argument, but not to be trusted, for I have seen moths comfortably browsing on a Burgundian hanging, keeping house and raising families on such precious stuff. Commerce demands that tricks shall be played in the repair room, but not such great ones that serious corruption will result. The coarse verdures of the Eighteenth Century that were thrown lightly off the looms with transient interest are sought now for coverings to antique chairs. To give the unbroken greens more charm, an occasional bird is snipped from a worn branch where he has long and mutely reposed, and is posed anew on the centre of a back or seat. It is the part of the repairer to see that he looks at home in his new surroundings. If metal threads have not been spoken of in this chapter on _modus operandi_, it is because metal is so little used since the time of Louis XV as to warrant omitting it. And the little that appears seems very different from the "gold of Cyprus" that made gorgeous and valuable the tapestries of Arras, of Brussels and of old Paris. CHAPTER XXIII THE BAYEUX TAPESTRY A. D. 1066 So long as one word continues to have more than one meaning, civilised man will continue to gain false impressions. The word tapestry suffers as much as any other--witness the attempt made for hundreds of years among all nations to set apart a word that shall be used only to designate the hand-woven pictured hangings and coverings discussed in this book; arras, gobelins, _toile peinte_, etc. In English, tapestry may mean almost any decorative stuff, and so comes it that we speak of the wonderful hanging which gives name to this chapter as the tapestry of Bayeux (plates facing pages 242, 243 and 244), when it is in reality an embroidery. But so much is it confused with true tapestry, and so poignantly does it interest the Anglo-Saxon that we will introduce it here, even while acknowledging its extraneous character. To begin with, then, we say frankly that it is not a tapestry; that it has no place in this book. And then we will trail its length through a short review of its history and its interest as a human document of the first order. In itself it is a strip of holland--brown, heavy linen cloth, measuring in length about two hundred and thirty-one feet, and in width, nineteen and two-thirds inches--remarkable dimensions which are accounted for in the neatest way. The hanging was used in the cathedral of the little French city of Bayeux, draped entirely around the nave of the Norman Cathedral, which space it exactly covered. This indicates to archeologists the original purpose of the hanging. On the brown linen is embroidered in coloured wools a panoramic succession of incidents, with border top and bottom. The colours are but eight, two shades each of green and blue, with yellow, dove-colour, red and brown.