The Life of the Fly 



firmed by my personal experience? I would 

 take up industrial chemistry. The municipal 

 lectures at Saint-Martial placed a spacious and 

 fairly well-equipped laboratory at my disposal. 

 Why not make the most of it? 



The chief manufacture of Avignon was 

 madder. The farmer supplied the raw material 

 to the factories, where it was turned into 

 purer and more concentrated products. My 

 predecessor had gone in for it and done well 

 by it, so people said. I would follow in his 

 footsteps and use the vats and furnaces, the 

 expensive plant which I had inherited. So to 

 work. 



What should I set myself to produce ? I pro- 

 posed to extract the colouring-substance, aliz- 

 arin, to separate it from the other matters 

 found with it in the root, to obtain it in the 

 pure state and in a form that allowed of the 

 direct printing of the stuffs, a much quicker 

 and more artistic method than the old dyeing- 

 process. 



Nothing could be simpler than this problem, 

 once the solution was known ; but how tremen- 

 dously obscure while it had still to be solved ! 

 I dare not call to mind all the imagination and ^ 

 patience spent upon endless endeavours which 

 nothing, not even the madness of them, dis- 



454 



