judge of his own cause, he did the weighing.

At the close of his third year Sauviat added the hawking of tin and
copper ware to that of his pottery. In 1793 he was able to buy a
chateau sold as part of the National domain, which he at once pulled
to pieces. The profits were such that he repeated the process at
several points of the sphere in which he operated; later, these first
successful essays gave him the idea of proposing something of a like
nature on a larger scale to one of his compatriots who lived in Paris.
Thus it happened that the "Bande Noire," so celebrated for its
devastations, had its birth in the brain of old Sauviat, the peddler,
whom all Limoges afterward saw and knew for twenty-seven years in the
rickety old shop among his cracked bells and rusty bars, chains and
scales, his twisted leaden gutters, and metal rubbish of all kinds. We
must do him the justice to say that he knew nothing of the celebrity
or the extent of the association he originated; he profited by his own
idea only in proportion to the capital he entrusted to the since
famous firm of Bresac.

Tired of frequenting fairs and roaming the country, the Auvergnat
settled at Limoges, where he married, in 1797, the daughter of a
coppersmith, a widower, named Champagnac. When his father-in-law died
he bought the house in which he had been carrying on his trade of
old-iron dealer, after ceasing to roam the country as a peddler. Sauviat
was fifty years of age when he married old Champagnac's daughter, who
was herself not less than thirty. Neither handsome nor pretty, she was
nevertheless born in Auvergne, and the _patois_ seemed to be the
mutual attraction; also she had the sturdy frame which enables women
to bear hard work. In the first three years of their married life
Sauviat continued to do some peddling, and his wife accompanied him,