Inflexible to the last, the old man is reported to have answered the king in this wise: "Sire, I am ready to resign my life for the glory of God. You have told me several times that you pity me; and I in my turn pity you, who have used the words '_I am constrained_.' It was not spoken like a king, sire; and these are words which neither you nor those who constrain you, the Guisards and all your people, will ever be able to make me utter, for I know how to die." The whole world admires pluck; and that, we cannot doubt, marked the character of the man. We need only to look at his face (Fig. 72) to believe that he might have said those words. And those who came after him, inheriting in a degree the hatred of the Catholics which he enjoyed, have not allowed the words nor the fame of the man to die. But he was not put to death; he lingered out his last year in the prisons of the Bastile, and then departed. The story he left behind him, of his own struggles and sufferings in seeking and finding the arts of the potter, has been intensified by his admirers; they have added to its intrinsic interest by telling of his patience, his endurance, his suffering, and his final success--that which can be imparted by the glow of admiring souls, who see in him a hero such as they would themselves wish to be, but are not. [Illustration: FIG. 72.--_Bernard Palissy._] That story is briefly this: He was born poor, but he had patience, industry, and an aspiring nature. He studied, he learned, he sought; he became something of a draughtsman, a painter, a surveyor, a writer. Glass-painting may be said to have been his occupation, or one of them; and, in following this, he came quickly into sympathy with cognate arts. We can well believe, therefore, that when he saw a beautifully-enameled cup--whether one of those now so famous as the _Henri-Deux_ ware, or whether one of those already made at Nuremberg by _Hirschvogel_ (probably the latter)--we can well believe that it inspired his soul with enthusiasm, and held him with the tenacity we know to have marked his character.