It is possible that this Claude Mollet was the creator of the _parterres_ and _broderies_ so largely used in his time, and after. Mollet's formula was derived chiefly from flower and plant forms, resembling in design oriental embroideries. He made equal use of the labyrinth and the sunken garden. His idea was to develop the simple _parquet_ into the elaborate _parterre_. He began his career under Henri III and ultimately became the gardener of Henri IV. His elaborate work "Theatre des Plans et Jardinage" was written towards 1610-1612, but was only published a half a century later. It was only in the sixteenth century that gardens in Paris were planned and developed on a scale which was the equal of many which had previously been designed in the provinces. [Illustration: PLAN of SUNKEN GARDEN (_JARDIN CREUX_)] The chief names in French gardening--before the days of Le Notre--were those of the two Mollets, the brothers Boyceau, de la Barauderie and Jacques de Menours, and all successively held the post of Superintendent of the Garden of the King. In these royal gardens there was always a distinctly notable feature, the _grand roiales_, the principal avenues, or alleys, which were here found on a more ambitious scale than in any of the private gardens of the nobility. The central avenue was always of the most generous proportions, the nomenclature coming from royal--the _grand roial_ being the equivalent of _Allee Royale_, that is, Avenue Royal. By the end of the sixteenth century the Garden of the Tuileries, which was later to be entirely transformed by Le Notre, offered an interesting aspect of the _parquet_ at its best. In "_Paris a Travers les Ages_" one reads that from the windows of the palace the garden resembled a great checker-board containing more than a hundred uniform _carreaux_. There were six wide longitudinal alleys or avenues cut across by eight or ten smaller alleys which produced this rectangular effect. Within some of the squares were single, or grouped trees; in others the conventional _quincunx_; others were mere expanses of lawn, and still others had flowers arranged in symmetrical patterns. In one of these squares was a design which showed the escutcheons of the arms of France and those of the Medici. These gardens of the Tuileries were first modified by a project of Bernard Palissy, the porcelainiste. He let his fancy have full sway and the criss-cross alleys and avenues were set out at their junctures with moulded ornaments, enamelled miniatures, turtles in faience and frogs in porcelain. It was this, perhaps, which gave the impetus to the French for their fondness to-day for similar effects, but Bernard Palissy doubtless never went so far as plaster cats on a ridgepole, as one may see to-day on many a pretty villa in northern France. This certainly lent an element of picturesqueness to the Renaissance Garden of the Louvre, a development of the same spirit which