However this may have been, here we have him seeking out and grinding all kinds of substances, mixing them, and coating with them pieces of ware which he first subjected to the action of an ordinary potter’s oven, afterwards to the more powerful heat employed by glass-makers. Then we see him building an oven in his own house--taking into his service a working potter, to whom, on one occasion, when he has no money for the payment of wages, he is obliged to give his own clothes; again we find him turning, single-handed, a mill for grinding his materials which ordinarily required “two powerful men” to work it; then again, wounding his hands in repairing the oven that the fire cracked, and the bricks and mortar of which had become “liquified and vitrified;” so that he is obliged for several days “to eat his soup with his fingers tied up in rags;” pushing the conscientiousness and zeal of an experimentalist so far as to fall down in a state of insensibility on finding that the whole contents of an oven, on which he had been relying, proved to have numerous defects. In despite [Illustration: BIBERON OF HENRI II WARE. Or Oiron fayence. (Pourtales’ Collection.) Now in the possession of J. Malcolm, Esq.] of his poverty we see him destroying pieces of work that he considered were not quite perfect, though a fair price was offered him for them, merely because “they might bring discredit on him and loss of reputation;” and finally, we see him breaking up and putting into the fire, for want of other fuel, the flooring of his house and the furniture of his humble abode. The magnificent discovery, brought about by the single initiative of an individual who had said that he would succeed, and who heroically endured all kinds of misery, privations, and humiliations, in order to attain his object, was the labour of not less than fifteen years. “To console me,” relates Palissy, “even those from whom I had a right to expect help laughed at me” (he here alludes to his family--his wife, and children--who had not the same unbounded faith as himself in the ultimate success of his labours); “they paraded the town exclaiming that I was burning the woodwork of my house; thus was my credit injured, and I was looked upon as a fool. Others said I was attempting to make base coin. I went about quite humiliated, ashamed of myself. I owed money in several quarters, and generally had two children out at nurse, and not able to pay the cost. All ridiculed me, saying: ‘He deserves to starve, because he has given up his trade.’