happened to receive a considerable sum of money for a work which he had
finished, and this enabled him to commence his researches. He spent the
whole of his money, however, without meeting with any success, and he was
now poorer than ever. Yet it was in vain that his wife and friends
besought him to relinquish what they deemed his chimerical and ruinous
project. He borrowed more money, with which he repeated his experiments;
and, when he had no more fuel wherewith to feed his furnaces, he cut down
his chairs and tables for that purpose. Still his success was
inconsiderable. He was now actually obliged to give a person, who had
assisted him, part of his clothes by way of remuneration, having nothing
else left; and, with his wife and children starving before his eyes, and
by their appearance silently reproaching him as the cause of their
sufferings, he was at heart miserable enough. But he neither despaired,
nor suffered his friends to know what he felt; persevering, in the midst
of all his misery, a gay demeanour, and losing no opportunity of renewing
his pursuit of the object which he all the while felt confident he should
one day accomplish. And at last, after sixteen years of persevering
exertion, his efforts were crowned with complete success, and his fortune
was made. Palissy was, in all respects, one of the most extraordinary men
of his time; in his moral character displaying a high-mindedness and
commanding energy altogether in harmony with the reach and originality of
conception by which his understanding was distinguished. Although a
Protestant, he had escaped, through the royal favour, from the massacre of
St. Bartholomew; but, having been soon after shut up in the Bastille, he
was visited in his prison by the king, who told him, that if he did not
comply with the established religion, he should be forced, however
unwillingly, to leave him in the hands of his enemies. 'Forced!' replied
Palissy, 'This is not to speak like a king; but they who force you cannot
force me; I can die!' He never regained his liberty, but ended his life in
the Bastille, in the ninetieth year of his age."