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A door, hidden by curtains, opens on to a staircase leading directly to the courtyard. The dining-room is in the purest Renaissance style austere woodwork; immense chests of caned pearwood, on which stand precious ewers in Urbino ware, and dishes by Bernard Palissy.
It is not so surprising, therefore, as it may at first seem, that although such men as Leonardo da Vinci and Bernard Palissy took just views of the nature of fossils, the opinion of the majority of their contemporaries set strongly the other way; nor even that error maintained itself long after the scientific grounds of the true interpretation of fossils had been stated, in a manner that left nothing to be desired, in the latter half of the seventeenth century.
Besides carrying on the manufacture of pottery, with the aid of his two sons, Palissy, during the latter part of his life, wrote and published several books on the potter's art, with a view to the instruction of his countrymen, and in order that they might avoid the many mistakes which he himself had made.
He knew nothing whatever of pottery. No man in France knew the secret of enameling, which made the Italian cup so beautiful, and Palissy had not the means to go to Italy, where he probably could have learned it. He resolved to study the nature and properties of clays, and not to rest until he had discovered the secret of the white enamel. Delightful visions filled his imagination.
The trade of glass painting, which in previous years had been a profitable one, had at that time fallen somewhat out of favor, and there was not enough work to keep father and son busy. When he shouldered his scanty wallet and bade farewell to father and mother, and the few friends and neighbors he knew in the straggling forest hamlet, Bernard Palissy closed the first chapter of his life.
Bernard Palissy endured the martyrdom appointed for all seekers into secrets but his wife and children and all his neighbors were against him. His wife used to sell his tools; nobody understood him, he wandered about the countryside, he was hunted down, they jeered at him. But I am loved " "Dearly loved!" said Eve, with the quiet serenity of the love that is sure of itself.
The men and women who shine as beacon-lights across the centuries are those whose tears were their meat day and night, whose prayers rose with strong cryings and tears; while, as with Palissy, the Huguenot potter, the very furniture of the house was brought out to feed the flame in which the precious glaze was being precipitated.
The hot impulse to grasp and materialize the dream ere it fades, is strong upon the man. Of course he is selfish he sacrifices everything, as Palissy did when fuel was short and the clay just at the turning-point. Yes, the artist is selfish: he sacrifices his wife and society, and himself, too, to get the work done.
All this is told with marvellous effect in the first part of the Souvenirs, which ends with a wail and a sob. It is stated in the Bibliographie Generale de l'Agenais, that Palissy was born in the district of Agen, perhaps at La Chapelle Biron, and that, being a Huguenot, he was imprisoned in the Bastille at Paris, and died there in 1590, shortly after the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
Bernard Palissy, Louis XI., Fox, Napoleon, Christopher Columbus, and Julius Caesar, all these world-famous gamblers had begun life hampered with debt, or as poor men; all of them had been misunderstood, taken for madmen, reviled for bad sons, bad brothers, bad fathers; and yet in after life each one had come to be the pride of his family, of his country, of the civilized world.
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