cessant toils we wonder that any human being should have lived to tell
the tale. He was too poor to get help; perhaps he did not want it; but
'he worked for more than a month night and day,' grinding into powder
the substances such as he had used at the moment of his success. But
heat the furnace as he might, it would not bake, and again he was
beaten. He had found the secret of the enamel, but not how to make it
form part of the pots.

Each time victory appeared certain some fresh misfortune occurred, the
most vexatious of all being one which seems due to Palissy's own
carelessness. The mortar used by the potter in building his kiln was
full of small pebbles, and when the oven became very hot these pebbles
split, and mixed with the glaze. Then the enamel was spread over the
earthen pots (which at last were properly baked), and the surface of
each vessel, instead of being absolutely smooth, became as sharp as a
razor and tore the hand of any unlucky person who touched it.

To guard against such accidents Palissy invented some sort of
cases--'lanterns' he calls them--in which to put his pots while in the
kiln, and these he found extremely useful. He now plucked up heart and
began to model lizards and serpents, tortoises and lobsters, leaves and
flowers, but it was a long while before he could turn them out as he
wished. 'The green of the lizards,' he tells us, 'got burned before the
colour of the serpents was properly fixed,' and the lobsters, serpents
and other creatures were baked before it suited the potter, who would
have liked them all to take the same time. But at length his patience
and courage triumphed over all difficulties. By-and-by he learned how to
manage his furnace and how to mix his materials; the victory had taken
him sixteen years to win, but at last he, and not the fire, was master;
henceforth he could make what he liked, and ask what price he chose.

And there we will leave Palissy the artist and turn to the life of
Palissy the Huguenot.

* * * * *

For some years past the reformed religion had spread rapidly in this
corner of France, and Palissy, always anxious to understand everything
that came in his way, began first to inquire into the new doctrines, and
then to adopt them. One of the converts, Philibert Hamelin, a native of
Tours, was seized by the magistrates and condemned to death, and
Palissy, who was his special friend, careless of any risk to himself,
did