Part 28 (2/2)
We may be sure that Palissy did not lose this happy chance of carrying into practice the 'delectable garden' of his dreams He had his workshops and kilns on the spot, and a band of skilled potters who baked the figures of men and animals which he himself fashi+oned out of clay
Two of his sons, Nicholas and Mathurin, seem to have inherited some of his talent, and were his partners, as we learn from a royal account book of the year 1570, and it must have been pleasant to him to have their company The queen herself often walked down froive her opinion as to the grouping of sorotto; and here too came his friends when in Paris, Montmorency, Conde, Jarnac and others, and Delorreat architects of the day The chateau of Ecouen, belonging to Montmorency, situated about twelve miles from Paris, had been decorated by Palissy before he entered the service of the queen-reat faalleries and the floor of the chapel were paved with tiles containing pictures of subjects taken out of the Bible In the garden was the first 'grotto' the potter ever made, and very proud he was of it, and still nal fro, and streaine the grave constable, occupied as he ith religious wars, or anxiously watching affairs of state, playing such rude and silly tricks on the gentle, and it is pleasanter to think of thes of birds which, we are told, were ih pipes and reeds
Altogether, Ecouen was thought a marvel of beauty and fancy, and everybody who considered they had any clai out to visit it
Safe under royal protection and happy in his work, Palissy did not trouble hiion When he was tired of the hot at the banks of the river, or into the woods and hills about Paris, and watch the birds and the insects fluttering a the trees
Then, with his mind full of what he had beheld, he would return to his workshop, and, calling for clay, would never rise from his chair until he had ht his fancy First he would form his oval-shaped dish, and in the centre of it would lie some twisted snakes, with sprays of leaves and flowers scattered round them, while over the cups of the flowers bees and butterflies hovered gaily Or, again, he would fashi+on a wavy sea, bordered by shells of all sorts, fishes, frogs, leaves, and butterflies, and in the racefully across the dish
Everything was true to nature and beautifully executed, and in those days it never seemed to strike anyone that dishes were meant to hold food and not to be treated as pictures
Palissy had been working for eight years in Paris when the ht to harh he was, and he lived on peacefully, respected by all, for soer
In 1574 Charles IX, the well-intentioned, half-, died, and his brother Henry, a man in every way much worse than himself, came to the throne Like the rest of his family, however, he was fond of art, and protected the potter, and a fewlectures on natural history to some of the most famous scientific men in Paris If he wanted to prove a point he had a quantity of drawings or materials at hand to show them He spoke well, and the fame of his lectures spread The little roo with lawyers, scholars, and, above all, physicians, the celebrated uenot like hi nine years Palissy continued to deliver these lectures every Lent, working steadilyhis furnaces at the Tuileries He was now seventy-five, and had escaped so ht well think himself safe to the end, which could not be far off
But in 1585 Henry III thought hiuenots Palissy had never concealed--as he had never obtruded--his faith, and, ation of someone who envied him, he was at once sent to the prison of the Bastille, and sentence of death passed upon hi friends, perhaps the e, stood hiood stead
This ti Guises, the duc de Mayenne, who saved hi carried out
For four years Palissy remained a prisoner Mayenne desired to set him free, but did not dare to do so, so left him where he was till better times came But Palissy had a surer friend than Mayenne, who ca fraer, cold, and dirt would break any man down, proved too hty years of age Little by little he greeaker, watched and tended, as far as ht be, by those who, like hi he went to sleep, and woke in the Delectable Garden