The boy now began to feel himself a man, and entered with his whole soul into his work. By the dim and uncertain light of the one lamp around which the Avisseau family gathered in the long winter evenings, Charles would spend hour after hour in tracing out new designs for the earthernware he was to paint on the morrow. He was at first too poor to purchase either pencil or paper, and used to manufacture from clay the best substitute he could for the former, while he generally employed the walls of the apartment as a substitute for the latter. He applied himself indefatigably to the study of every branch of his art--the different varieties of earths, the methods of baking them, the mode of producing various enamels, &c.--until, after some years of patient labor in the humble situation he had first occupied, he was offered the post of superintendent of the manufactory of fine porcelain at Beaumont-les-Hotels. He was still, however, but a poor man; and, having married very young, was struggling with family cares and the trials of penury, when one day there fell into his hands an old enameled earthenware vase, which filled him with a transport of astonishment and delight. This was the _chef-d'oeuvre_ he had so often dreamed of, and longed to accomplish; the colors were fired on the ware without the aid of the white glaze, and the effect was exquisite. "Whose work is this masterpiece?" inquired the young man. "That of Bernard Palissy," was the reply; "a humble potter by birth. He lived at Saintes three centuries ago, and carried with him to the grave the secret of the means by which his beautiful enamels were produced." "Well, then," thought Avisseau, "I will rediscover this great secret. If he was a potter like me, why should not I become an artist like him?"