The Professor: Avignon 



The chief manufacture of Avignon was madder. 

 The farmer supplied the raw material to the fac- 

 tories, 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, alizarin, 

 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 tremendously ob- 

 scure 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, discouraged. What mighty 

 meditations in the sombre church! What glowing 

 dreams, soon to be followed by sore disappoint- 

 ment when experiment spoke the last word and 

 upset the scaffolding of my plans! Stubborn as 

 the slave of old amassing a peculium for his en- 

 franchisement, I used to reply to the check of yes- 

 terday by the fresh attempt of to-morrow, often 

 as faulty as the others, sometimes the richer by an 

 improvement; and I went on indefatigably, for I, 

 too, cherished the indomitable ambition to set my- 

 self free. 



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