Jacquard with all earthly ties severed went back to the seclusion of inventing. After his day's work was done as a laborer, he studied on his machine for silk-weaving. Finally, after seven years,--a long time to patiently develop an idea,--he had produced a loom which would decrease the number of workmen at each machine, by one person. The model was placed at the Paris Industrial Exposition in 1801; and the maker was awarded a bronze medal. In gratitude for this discovery he went to the image of the Virgin which stood on a high hill, and for nine days ascended daily the steps of the sacred place. Then he returned to his work, and seating himself before a Vaucanson loom, which contained the germ of his own, he consecrated himself anew to the perfecting of his invention. Jacques de Vaucanson, who died when Jacquard was thirty years old, was one of the most celebrated mechanicians of France. His automatons were the wonder of the age. He exhibited a duck which, when moved, ate and drank like a live one. The figure would stretch out its neck for food, and swallow it: walk, swim, dabble in the water, and quack most naturally. His musician, playing the flageolet with the left hand, and beating the tambourine with the right, executing many pieces of difficult music with great accuracy, was an astonishment to every body. He had been appointed inspector of silk-factories at Lyons, and, because he made some improvements in machines, he was pelted with stones by the workmen, who feared that they would thereby lose their labor. He revenged himself by making a machine which wove, brocaded, and colored at the same time, and was worked by a donkey! It remained for Jacquard to make the Vaucanson loom of the utmost practical use to Lyons and to the world. After a time he was not only able to dispense with one workman at each loom, but he made machinery do the work of three men and two women at each frame. The city authorities sent a model of this machine to Paris, that the Emperor Napoleon might examine it. So pleased was he that he at once sent for Jacquard to come to Paris. The latter had previously invented a machine for making fishing-nets, now used in producing Nottingham lace. When brought before Bonaparte, and Carnot the Minister of the Interior, the latter asked, "Is it you then, who pretend to do a thing which is impossible for man,--to make a knot upon a tight thread?" Jacquard answered the brusque inquiry by setting up a machine, and letting the incredulous minister see for himself.