There lived, in the reign of Francis I. of France, an honest countryman,
of Périgord, named Bernard Palissy. At that time everybody could not
afford to have earthenware plates, as they have now. It was a
manufacture of which only the Italians had the secret, and Bernard,
who knew something of the matter, from being a glass-worker, took it
into his head to try and find it out entirely by himself. So, without
asking anybody's advice, he turned potter, built ovens, picked up wood
as he could, manufactured his first pots, whether well or ill, made
a beginning, and waited. He had fifteen or sixteen years of it before
he succeeded; fifteen or sixteen years of ruinous experiments, which
would have discouraged a less sturdy heart than his. But he, after he
had succeeded in picking up some money by his church windows, returned
to his work with unconquerable perseverance, insensible to poverty,
deaf to the ridicule of neighbors, and unmoved by the abuse of his
wife, who was furious, as you may suppose, at being forced to play the
heroine without having the least turn for it. And one fine day there
was a grand uproar in La Chapelle-Biron (that was the name of his
village). "Bernard Palissy has gone mad," said everybody; "he is burning
up his house to bake his pots." And upon my word it was true! Wood
happened to be wanting while a batch was in the oven, and Bernard
having begun by using up the garden palisades, took next the large
tables, and at last the floor of the house! What his wife had to say,
I leave you to judge; as for him he listened to nothing; but, fixing
his eyes on the insatiable furnace, threw in one thing after another,
caring only for the risk to his handiwork. The ceiling would have
followed the floor had not his pots been sufficiently baked without.
And thus, and thus, does the blood, when combustible matter fails him!
He demolishes the house, and throws it, bit by bit, into the fire. The
fat goes into it naturally enough, as I have already explained to you.
It is the fuel-store of the house. It was put by on purpose, and may
be used up without injury. Then comes the turn of the muscles; more
useful without being indispensable. Those are Bernard Palissy's
palisades one may contrive to do without them. They melt away, so to
speak, after a few days' fast, and you find yourself what people call
"nothing but skin and bone." But then, if this condition is prolonged,
and the exhausted flesh cannot supply the demand, the blood does not
hesitate a moment. He boldly falls upon the most important organs,
without stopping to consider; he, too, is devoted solely to his work,
and that, like the baking of pots, never comes to an end by being
completed; if external help does not arrive in time, the house soon
becomes uninhabitable, and life slips away. The man dies of hunger.
But in the same way that poor Bernard Palissy was in reality working,
all the time, for his wife and children, whose future well-being he
strove for as the final end of all his efforts, though at the risk of
letting them sleep under the bare heavens; so the blood was laboring
up to the last moment for that very life which he at last turned out
of doors; and the work of destruction which caused its final departure
has had in reality the effect of prolonging its stay. Without it, all
would have been over long before.