Catherine looked disconcerted at this unexpected _jeu-de-mot_ of her son, and rising somewhat hastily, stepped across the room, and taking the arm of Charles, bowed gracefully to the constable and withdrew. The result of this colloquy was that, in as short a time as the royal post could convey the letter of M. de Montmorency to Bordeaux, Palissy was released from the power of his enemies, and being thoroughly protected from the hostilities of the belligerents on either side, returned to Saintes, and resumed his place in the dilapidated workshop, whose broken doors bore sorrowful witness to the ravages of civil strife. Alas! it was now a very different home, for the town was half depopulated; the best of the inhabitants had fled or been slaughtered in the streets, churches had been battered, and rude hands had wrought destruction everywhere. But nothing seems to have shaken the equilibrium of his spirit, and he could say, with St. Paul, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.” It is evident that he had attained to that fortitude and equanimity, that happy confidence of spirit, which so substantially realizes the truth of the divine promise—“Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee, because he trusteth in thee;” the solid reality, this, of what the ancient sages did but dream about, and of which they sweetly sang, as in the famous ode of Horace— “The man of strong resolve and just design When, for bad ends, infuriate mobs combine, Or gleams the terror of the monarch’s frown Firm in his rock-based worth, on both looks down.” {127}