Thus you can well imagine how heroically there loomed forth from that frontispiece the figure of one who was deliberately breaking up chairs, tables, stools, four-posters, and what not--and a grown man at that! But the thrillingness of the situation was further enhanced by the fact that not only was he breaking up the furniture but he was feeding it to the flames! There was no doubt of it: a copious employment of carmine and saffron made that point clear. That any one should have dared to be so deliberately destructive at once awakened my curiosity, and I am not sure it did not awaken my admiration as well. I hope not, for as we grow older we like to think that our Golden Days were paragon in their virtues. It was not long before I discovered in the background of the picture the figure of a woman in a Breton cap--inexcusable anachronism, though I did not know it then. Who was she? The furniture-breaker’s governess, perhaps; no, that could not be, for he was older than she. From the corner of my eye I took a swift visual dart at Miss Solander. The lady in the picture appeared timid and weeping. No, it would not be a governess. Just then a voice interrupted: “What are you looking at, child?” “I do not know,” I replied. “You do not know!” exclaimed Miss Solander in expected disapproval. “Pray, why do you not know?” She moved near, to be serviceable. Now, Miss Solander never cared for pictures, at least only for painted ones of forget-me-nots and buttercups in water-color and sheep by Mauve in oil, so I hurried on to spell out the title-page. I gave it up. “P-a-l-i-s-sy,--Palissy. Master Bernard Palissy the Potter,” coached Miss Solander. “What is a potter?” I asked. And then it began. In these after years I have always been glad that Miss Solander’s embroidery chenille gave out at the first question, and that a gentle rain kept us indoors. Undoubtedly, too, this little book had been known to _her_ childhood, for she extended it a more approving greeting than it was her wont to vouchsafe many of my other early literary discoveries. At any rate, I have forgiven her much, for that afternoon she read me the story of Master Bernard from beginning to end. How it all came back to me yesterday when my friend Cleon, at whose house I was dining, took me into his library and showed me, not a book about the old potter but an actual bit of his craft, a sauce-boat in the enameled faience which Palissy struggled through so many years of vicissitude to produce. Tenderly I took it in my hands and gazed intimately upon its lovely soft blues, grays, browns, wonderful greens, and the soft and well-fused marbled colors on the back of the piece, all of which, together with the sharp modeling of the relief and “neatness” of its workmanship gave unmistakable evidence of its authenticity. It had not the crude greens, the glaring yellows or the bright purples that betray imitations of Palissy’s ware.