We have just intimated it was at Saintes that Palissy, when in search of immortal fame, underwent his rude apprenticeship. A short time after he had attained these definite results, religious questions having caused some disturbances in Saintonge, the Constable de Montmorency, who had been sent to suppress the Huguenot rising, had an opportunity of seeing Palissy’s works: he requested that he should be presented to him, and at once declared himself his friendly protector. And we must take this word protector in its widest sense, for the potter, who had zealously embraced the doctrines of the Reformation, and who subsequently preferred to be imprisoned for life rather than abjure his faith (if he did not die in the Bastille, at least he was imprisoned there at the time of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew), indeed required protection, as much for the exercise of liberty of conscience as for carrying on his artistic labours. After Montmorency had commissioned him to execute some considerable works, which also gained him the patronage of several important personages, he obtained for him the favour of royalty. Palissy was summoned to Paris, and received the title of “inventeur des rustiques figulines du roi et de la reine-mère”--Henri II. and Catherine de Médicis. He was lodged in the Tuileries; and was not long there before he became renowned, not only for his ceramic productions, but also for his scientific knowledge. In the recent building operations at the Tuileries, on digging a trench in the garden, the workshop of Bernard Palissy was discovered; being recognised by fragments and various pieces of enamelled pottery with figures in relievo. Among these was found a large fragment of the dish of Palissy, known under the name of the Baptismal Dish, on account of the subject represented thereon. In July, 1865, while excavating in the part of the palace where the “Salle des Etats” has been built, the workmen discovered, below the level of the surface soil, two ovens for baking pottery, in a tolerably good state of preservation. One contained pieces of those muffles (_gazettes_) Palissy is said to have invented, and which were employed in baking delicate pieces of work--imprints of various kinds of ornaments, and figures in altorelievo: two of these are described by Palissy himself in the “Devis d’une grotte pour la royne, mère du roy” (“device of a grotto for the queen, the king’s mother”), and which he thus indicates in the following sentence:--“I should wish to make certain figures from nature, following her so closely, even to the small hair in the beard and eyebrows, as to make them the natural size.” These peculiarities are to be seen in the fragments of the moulds which have been discovered. In the same page Palissy says, “Also there would be another, composed completely of sea-shells of different kinds; that is to say, the two eyes of two shells, the nose, mouth, and chin, forehead and cheeks, all made out of