The grey dawn comes, but still the enamel melts not. His boy brings him a portion of the scanty family meal. There shall soon be an end to that miserable fare! More faggots are cast on the fire. The night falls, and the sun rises on the third day of his tending and watching at the furnace door, but still the powder shows no signs of melting. Pale, haggard, sick at heart with anxiety and dread, worn with watching, parched and fevered with the heat of the fire, through another, and yet another and another day and night, through six days and six nights in all, Bernard Palissy watches by the glaring furnace, feeds it continually with wood, and still the enamel is unmelted. "Seeing it was not possible to make the said enamel melt, I was like a man in desperation; and although quite stupified with labour, I counselled to myself that in my mixture there might be some fault. Therefore I began once more to pound and grind more materials, all the time without letting my furnace cool. In this way I had double labour, to pound, grind, and maintain the fire. I was also forced to go again and purchase pots in order to prove the said compound, seeing that I had lost all the vessels which I had made myself. And having covered the new pieces with the said enamel, I put them into the furnace, keeping the fire still at its height." By this time it was no easy matter to "keep the fire at its height." His stock of fuel was exhausted; he had no money to buy any more, and yet fuel must be had. On the very eve of success--alas! an eve that so seldom has a dawn--it would never do to lose it all for want of wood, not while wood of any kind was procurable. He rushed into the garden, tore up the palings, the trellis work that supported the vines, gathered every scrap of wood he could find, and cast them on the fire. But soon again the deep red glow of the furnace began to fade, and still it had not done its work. Suddenly a crashing noise was heard; his wife, the children clinging to her gown, rushed in. Palissy had seized the chairs and table, had torn the door from its hinges, wrenched the window frames from their sockets, and broken them in pieces to serve as fuel for the all-devouring fire. Now he was busy breaking up the very flooring of the house. And all in vain! The composition would not melt. "I suffered an anguish that I cannot speak, for I was quite exhausted and dried up by the heat of the furnace. Further to console me, I was the object of mockery; even those from whom solace was due, ran, crying through the town that I was burning my floors. In this way my credit was taken from me, and I was regarded as a madman," if not, as he tells us elsewhere, as one seeking ill-gotten gains, and sold to the evil one for filthy lucre.