PRODUCTION OF SILK. 145 



On its being sent to Paris, an order was issued for the 

 arrest of its constructor, by Napoleon, in his usual sud- 

 den and arbitrary way. He was placed immediately in 

 charge of a gendarme, and was not allowed to go to his 

 house to provide himself with necessaries for his jour- 

 ney. Arrived in the metropolis, he was placed in the 

 Conservatoire des Arts, and required to make the ma- 

 chine there in the presence of inspectors : an order with 

 which he accordingly complied. On his being present- 

 ed to Bonaparte and Carnot, the former addressed him 

 with an air of incredulity, in the following coarse lan- 

 guage : " Are you the man who pretends to do 

 what God Almighty cannot do, to tie a knot in a 

 stretched string?" He then produced the machine, 

 and exhibited its mode of operation. He was afterwards 

 called upon to examine a loom on which from 20,000 

 to 30,000 francs had been expended for making fab- 

 rics for Bonaparte's use. He undertook to do, by a 

 simple mechanism, what had in vain been attempted by 

 a very complicated one : and taking as his pattern a 

 model machine of Vaucanson, he produced the famous 

 Jacquard loom. He returned to his native town, reward- 

 ed with a pension of a thousand crowns, but experi- 

 enced the utmost difficulties to introduce his machine 

 among the silk weavers, and was three times in danger 

 of being assassinated. The Conseil desPrud' Hommes, 

 who are the official conservators of the trade of Lyons, 

 broke up his loom in the public place, sold the iron and 

 wood for old materials, and denounced him as an object of 

 universal hatred and ignominy. Nor was it till the French 

 people were beginning to feel the force of foreign com- 

 petition, that they had recourse to this admirable aid of 

 their countryman ; since which time they have found it 

 to be the only real protection and prop of their trade." 



In the invention and formation of the most elegant 

 figured patterns, as -in most other branches of the fine 

 arts, the taste of the French is superior to that of the 

 whole world ; their patterns being the imitations of 



