The _Salle des États_ contained formerly the archives of Velay, and in removing them a few years since (about A.D. 1850) portions of a hanging of blue wool, “semée” with fleurs-de-lys, and adorned with the armorial bearings of Jean de Bourbon, Bishop of Le Puy from A.D. 1443 to 1485, were found.[42] At the same time a curious painting on the east wall of the lower chamber was discovered under the whitewash. It represents four liberal sciences--Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, and Music--as females seated with ancient worthies at their feet. Priscian sits below Grammar, writing; and two boys, with open books, are on her other side. Logic holds a lizard in one hand and a scorpion in the other, and Aristotle is arguing below. The inscription underneath is--“Me sine doctores frustrâ coluere sorores,” and each figure has a corresponding leonine verse inscribed below. Rhetoric holds a file in her left hand, and Cicero sits at her feet. Music plays an organ, whilst Tubal, with two hammers, plays upon an anvil. There used--according to the “_Chronique des Médicis_”--to be a second painting here with figures of young demoiselles gorgeously clothed, and from the same chronicle it appears that Messire Pierre Odin, official of the Bishop Jean de Bourbon, who died in 1502, presented both:--“Il estait si grant orateur que, par son mellifère et suaviloquent langage, fust commis plusieurs fois estre ambassadeur devers le Pape à la requette du très-excellent et redouté Prince Louis XI. roy de France, lequel dudict Pape obtint grande louange et avoir, ce que il employa en divers façons et moyens en aulmosnes et à la décoration de cette saincte église du Puy.” The picture has considerable merit; its detail is a mixture of Renaissance and Gothic, and the Gothic portion--as for instance, the chair on which one of the figures sits--is not Italian, and I should be inclined to suppose that it was the work, therefore, of a French artist. Its date must be between 1475 and 1502. Louis XI. came to Le Puy on a pilgrimage in 1475.