lands
about Saintes, in order to support his wife and little children, his
thoughts were perpetually occupied with the enamelled cup, and how to
make one like it. If he could only see a few more, perhaps something
might give him a clue; but how was he to do that? Then one day in the
winter of 1542 a pirate boat from La Rochelle, on the coast, sailed into
port with a great Spanish ship in tow, filled with earthenware cups from
Venice, and plates and goblets from the Spanish city of Valencia, famous
for its marvellously beautiful glaze. The news of the capture soon
reached Palissy, and we may be sure he had made a study of the best of
the pots before they were bought by the king, Francis I., and given away
to the ladies of the French court. But the Venetian and Spanish
treasures still kept their secret, and Palissy was forced to work on in
the dark, buying cheap earthen pots and breaking them, and pounding the
pieces in a mortar, so as to discover, if he could, the substances of
which they were made.

* * * * *

All this took a long time, and Palissy gave up his surveying in order to
devote his whole days to this labour of love. The reward, however, was
very slow in coming, and if he had not contrived to save a little money
while he was still a bachelor his wife and children would have starved.
Week after week went by, and Palissy was to be seen in his little
workshop, making experiments with pieces of common pots, over which he
spread the different mixtures he had made. These pieces, he tells us,
'he baked in his furnace, hoping that some of these mixtures might, when
hot, produce a colour'; white was, however, what he desired above all,
as he had heard that if once you had been able to procure a fine white,
it was comparatively easy to get the rest. Remembering how as a boy he
had used certain chemical substances in staining the glass, he put these
into some of his mixtures, and hopefully awaited the result.

But, alas! he 'had never seen earth baked,' and had no idea how hot the
fire of his furnace should be, or in what way to regulate it. Sometimes
the substance was baked too much, and sometimes too little; and every
day he was building fresh furnaces in place of the old ones which had
cracked, collecting fresh materials, making fresh failures, and
altogether wasting a great deal of time and money.

* * * * *

Thus passed several years, and it is a ma