As in our country, though in a somewhat less degree, the Gothic feeling in design lingered long in France, at least in the more remote provinces. An enamelled glass basin, preserved in the museum at Rennes (figured by M. Gerspach, p. 199), bears round the margin in large Gothic letters the words—PRION ⁝ DIEU ⁝ QUI ⁝ NOUS ⁝ PARDON ⁝ 1597. On the ground of the style of decoration, to say nothing of the lettering, this bowl might well, in the absence of the date, have been referred to the fifteenth century. Perhaps the oldest example that has been preserved of this French enamelled glass is the tazza in the Cluny Museum, with the arms of Louis XII. and Anne of Brittany. This cup must date from the early years of the sixteenth century. There is one variety of enamelled glass, Venetian in its origin, which we in England generally associate with France, although there are scant references to it in the French authors who have described the glass of their country. I refer to the ‘splashed’ glass, an old method of decoration indeed, for we have found something very like it on certain little unguent vases of the ancient Egyptians. In the present case the enamels—red, yellow, blue, and white—lie in oval masses on the surface, reminding one in some cases of the sections of the pebbles on a piece of polished pudding-stone. How these enamels were splashed on to the unfinished _paraison_ has been already described (p. 64). I may add that the little barrel-shaped flask (the _barillet_ or _bariz_ of the old writers) to which this decoration is sometimes applied, is a characteristic French form. Among the French glass in the British Museum may be seen some little scent-bottles or burettes of moulded glass, decorated with _fleurs-de-lis_ in relief. These are generally attributed to a certain Bernard Perrot of Orleans, to whom, in 1662, extensive privileges were granted by Colbert. We are told by a contemporary writer (Abraham du Pradel, _Livre Commode_, 1691) that this Perrot imitated agates and gems as well as the porcelain of China, and that he cast his glass into moulds to obtain bas-reliefs and other ornaments. This early reference to the copying of porcelain by means of opaque white glass is of some interest. I do not know what precise source has been found for the little cups of this milky glass of which there are some examples among the French glass in the British Museum—they are painted with a rudely executed floral decoration of a somewhat Oriental type—but they may without doubt be connected with one of the many attempts made at this time or somewhat later to imitate the porcelain of the Far East. This opaque white French glass should be compared with a very similar ware made at Barcelona, of which something will be said in the next chapter. CHAPTER XV THE RENAISSANCE GLASS OF THE SPANISH NETHERLANDS AND OF SPAIN