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Bernard Palissy — His Wisdom and His Wares 
{Continued from page 19) 
pected to see such a treasure acquired. 
Strangely enough, it had been discov¬ 
ered, not just bought, discovered in 
London, and, unromantically enough, 
though exultingly, in a shop whose 
keeper ought to have known what it 
was, who ought to have known enough 
not to have let it go for the mere pit¬ 
tance of—but that is Cleon’s secret! 
My own flaire for collecting has often 
fed my pride, but it is tempered with a 
happy contentment for an interest in the 
things I cannot have, may never hope 
to have! I cannot, perhaps, describe to 
you the delight I experienced in coming 
upon that sauciere at Cleon’s, the joy I 
felt in being permitted to take my time 
in gloating over it untimed by a museum 
curator, whose official anxiety must of 
necessity ever play false to his kindly 
attempt to conceal it. When I came 
home I looked over all my photographs 
of Palissy Ware, and took down from 
its shelf in my library a volume in 
French of the Works of Master Bernard, 
a volume of the date of 1636, fpllowed 
by one of 1777 and one of 1844. Mas¬ 
ter Bernard was not only a notable pot¬ 
ter, but as both Lamartine and Anatole 
France observed, he holds a high posi¬ 
tion among French writers in the field 
of natural philosophy, agriculture and 
religion. 
A Record of Struggle 
Master Bernard’s early life is wrapped 
in mystery. We do know that he was 
a Worker in stained-glass—a craft which 
bore the aristocratic distinction in his 
time of its being followed by the needy 
gentry,—that he traveled afar in his 
youth, and that he returned to his own 
country and settled in Saintes about 
1542, a married man, adding portrait 
painting and land surveying to his vo¬ 
cations. 
I imagine that Master Palissy, Ma¬ 
dame and the little Palissys—there were 
little Palissys—got on very comfortably 
for a time. Had not the Council of 
King Francis I. decided to impose a 
salt tax on the Saintonge, and had not 
Master Bernard been commissioned to 
make the surveys of the salt marshes in 
the neighborhood of Saintes? 
However, there came a day when— 
Palissy tells us this himself—he was 
shown an earthen cup turned and en¬ 
ameled so beautifully that from that 
moment he entered into dispute with 
himself, remembering many things that 
people had told him, making mock of 
him when he was painting pictures. 
Now, seeing that these things were no 
longer much wanted in the part of the 
country where he dwelt, he began to 
think that if he found out the invention 
of making enamel he could make ves¬ 
sels of clay and other things of comely 
favor, as God had granted him to 
understand somewhat of portraiture. 
Without caring that he knew nothing 
concerning argillacious earths, he set 
himself to search out enamels like a man 
who gropes in the darkness. These are 
his words. 
How the imagination wreathes around 
that mysterious cup which inspired 
Master Bernard. What was it, maiolica 
of Italy or of Spain, or was it an en¬ 
ameled cup of southern France?- None 
of these things, I think. I cannot im¬ 
agine it could have been anything short 
of some such treasure as a porcelain cup 
fetched from China by some Marco 
Polo! 
At any rate. Master Bernard set 
about the business diligently and per¬ 
sistently. Once he had made up his 
mind to a thing there was no changing 
him, so long as the thing he had set his 
mind to appeared to him better, more 
wise or more righteous than that which 
would take its place. He became as 
persistent a potter as he had been, (and 
as he was!), persistent a protestant. 
Lucky it was for him that the Constable 
de Montmorency, who was sent by the 
King to quell an uprising in Saintes, 
chanced to come across Master Bernard 
and to take up with his ingenious com¬ 
positions. 
Before this day, however. Master 
Bernard had slaved away at his experi¬ 
ments, neglecting his work, meeting dis¬ 
appointments and reverses, until finally 
there was not even a crust left in the 
house. His invention of a white enamel 
was only a step out of the darkness. 
This is his own story: “Upon the dis¬ 
covery of the white enamel, another 
misfortune befell me, causing me great 
annoyance; which was that running 
short of wood I was obliged to burn 
the palings which maintained the boun¬ 
daries of my garden, the which after 
being burnt I had to burn the tables 
and the floorings of my house in >rder 
to cause the melting of the second .om- 
position. I was in such agony as I can¬ 
not express, for I was utterly exhausted 
and withered up with my work and the 
heat of the furnace; during more than a 
month my shirt had never been dry 
upon me; even those who ought to have 
helped me ran crying through the -town 
that I was burning the planks of the 
floors, so that I was made to lose my 
credit, and was thought to be mad. 
Others said that I was trying to coin 
false money, and I went about crouch¬ 
ing to the earth like one ashamed.” I 
think that what Madame Palissy did 
not say places her in the hierarchy of 
our marveling esteem 1 Howbeit I 
write of a hero and not of heroines. 
Ah, little blue book with the gilt 
morning-glories, the analine frontis¬ 
piece! Brave, unflinching Master Ber¬ 
nard; brave, suffering madame! 
Recognition Comes 
Probably by that time Palissy’s wife’s 
mother had left them and had taken the 
children with her for a summer. How¬ 
beit, the day arrived when Master Ber¬ 
nard pulled a perfect plate from the 
kiln. He had succeeded. The Saintonge 
had known he would—of course, after¬ 
wards! But Master Bernard was de¬ 
cent about it. When the Montmorency 
arrived Palissy was already entering 
upon a profitable livelihood. Though 
his Huguenotism might have naade life 
precarious, the protection extended by 
the Constable made all go well for a 
while. Palissy was called upon to un¬ 
dertake the decoration of the Chateau 
d’Ecoun in his faience. Soon his fame 
spread to Paris and he was fetched 
thither and made “Inventor of Rustic 
Figulines to the King and the Queen- 
Mother” with workshops in what is now 
part of the gardens of the Tuilleries. 
The nobility patronized him. He be¬ 
came a favorite of the Queen-Mother, 
Catherine di Medici, and was saved 
from the Massacre of St. Bartholomew’s 
Eve. He discoursed to the learned on 
topics in Natural Philosophy and was 
respectfully listened to at a crown a 
head, a large lect#e entrance fee for 
those days. 
Palissy in Prison 
Although Master Bernard had es¬ 
caped with his life, his property had 
been destroyed in 1562, and now, twen¬ 
ty-six years later, he found himself at 
seventy-eight again in peril. This time 
the King, Henry HI., declared he could 
do nothing for him unless he would 
recant the heresy of his Huguenot faith. 
Palissy indignantly scorned the ignoble 
terms of release and remained in the 
Bastille, whither he had been led a pris¬ 
oner to the great satisfaction of the 
ecclesiastical court. Probably kings had 
ceased to become interested in gray¬ 
haired potters and their expenses. At 
any rate. Master Bernard was con- 
{Continued on page 70) 
