“Struggling on in this way, at the end of ten years I became so thin that my legs and arms had no roundness of shape left about them; my legs were all of a size (_toutes d’une venue_); so that as soon as I began to walk, the garters with which I fastened my stockings used at once to slip down, stockings and all, on to my heels.... For many years, having nothing wherewith to cover my ovens, I was exposed all night long to the winds and the rains, without receiving any help or consolation, except from the screech-owls hooting on one side and the dogs howling on the other.... Sometimes I found myself, with all my garments wet through from the rain, going to bed at midnight, or at dawn of day; and when proceeding in this condition to bed, I went reeling along without a light, and stumbling from side to side, like a man drunk with wine; I was overcome by previous sorrow, the more so because after long-continued work I saw my labour lost. And on entering my chamber I found a fresh persecution awaiting me--the complaints of my wife--worse than the first, and which now makes me wonder how it was I did not die of grief.... I have been in such anguish that many and many a time I fancied I was at death’s door.” At last, despite all these obstacles, disappointments, physical and mental suffering, the determined experimentalist succeeded in his anticipations, and gave to the world those works he called _rustics_, and which were so original and so beautiful that they had but to be seen in order to invite attention, and to gain for him all the praise, as well as the profit, he received.