Yet he learned reading, writing, and something of figuring, besides something of design and also of geometry, after the simple methods of his time. It is doubtful if any of the learning of his day was communicated to him in his youth, and it seems more probable that he drew inspiration for his philosophy from the trees and the earth, and that nature herself taught him those many lessons he applied so perfectly to future problems which confronted him. But we know that at an early age he became apprenticed to the art of painting and working at glass. Inasmuch as this art was considered very honorable in those days and practised by members of the lesser nobility, it is possible that Palissy may have sprung from that class who did not lose their dignity of station by following this vocation. But under Francis I there came a certain disassociation in the crafts. The architect separated from the builder, the sculptor from the stone-worker, and the glass-painter from the glass-worker. It was then the art fell into decay somewhat, and like many another disappointed worker, Palissy turned aside to seek some other field for his abilities, as now he was scarcely able to eke out a living by the old means. For a time he commanded better fortune. In a document by him preserved in the Bibliothéque Nationale we read: “They thought me a better painter than I was, which caused me to be often summoned to draw plans for use in courts of law. Then when I had such commissions I was very well paid.” However, his superb improvidence--for one may almost call it such--delayed anything like his establishment in life, for we find him at the age of twenty-one years journeying through France as a sort of free-lance; at the very time, indeed, when Paracelsus the philosopher at thirty-seven was wandering, quite as ragged, through Germany. Finally he returned to his own country and settled in Saintes, about 1542, promptly married, and in the course of time became father to a goodly family, which he supported by his work of surveying the salt marshes of Saintonge when his skill as a worker in glass and in designing was not in demand. I imagine that Master Palissy, Madame and the little Palissys got on very comfortably for a time. Had not the Council of King Francis decided to impose a salt tax on the Saintonge, and had not Master Bernard been commissioned to make the surveys of the salt marshes in the neighborhood of Saintes? Probably he spent much of his time in “tracing lines of geometry,” of which things he wrote, “It is well known that, thanks be to God, I am not altogether ignorant.” He had also added portrait-painting to his accomplishments. A more provident man than he might have prospered and his name have been forgotten. While the impecunious are not always to be rated wise, it is certain that Palissy’s poverty drove him to the achievement of his fame as a potter in his desperate struggle to be free from its bonds.