Palissy the Huguenot Potter. Brightwell Cecilia Lucy

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СКАЧАТЬ steadily at his occupation of glass-working and surveying. What was to be done? “Begin afresh.” And so, again he fell to work, compounding and grinding, and sending more batches to the same potters to be baked as before. This he had continued to do time after time, “with great cost, loss of time, confusion, and sorrow.”

      At length a more than usually trying failure had occurred, and many things combined to warn our artist that he must desist for a season and procure some remunerative work. His home resources were completely exhausted; while the home wants had greatly multiplied, and he could not be blind to the sorrowful looks of the woman he loved, nor indifferent to the necessities of his babes.

      Three years had been spent about this work, and, for the present, he was no wiser than when he began, and he resolved now to try his hand at the old trades. His poor wife urged that food and medicine must be thought of, and she lowered her voice as she added that the doctor had yet to be paid for her confinement, and for physicking their lost darling, whom he said he would soon cure, notwithstanding, she pined and languished like a frost-nipped flower, that fades away and dies. Poor mother! the tears trickled down her cheeks at the thought; and for all there were still three hungry little mouths to feed, she could not be reconciled to the loss of one of her treasures. But Palissy would not let her dwell upon this sorrow; he wiped away the tears, and smilingly said, he had good news for her. Yesterday, there had arrived in the town the commissioners deputed by the king to establish the salt-tax in the district of Saintonge; and it seems they had judged no man in the diocese more competent than Bernard Palissy for the task of mapping the islands and the countries surrounding all the salt marshes in that part of the world. It was a profitable job, and would occupy him many months.

      This was, indeed, glad tidings for Lisette; and that night she slept sweetly, and dreamed of her girlhood; for when the heart is happy it suns itself in the memories of early days. Her husband’s rest was broken and perturbed, for it pained him deeply to give up the struggle which had cost him so much, before he had justified his pertinacious efforts by success.

      Perhaps it was in reality advantageous to him, and tended to his eventual success, that he was thus perforce constrained to taste an interval of repose. When a man has been repeatedly foiled it is well to cease from effort awhile, and to dismiss, if possible, the subject which has occupied his thoughts too long and too unremittingly.

      Revolving in his mind such considerations, Palissy determined wholly to cease from his labours in pursuit of the discovery on which his heart was set, and “to comport himself as if he were not desirous to dive any more into the secrets of enamels.”

      CHAPTER III

      “Here is the patience of the saints; here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus.”

– Rev. xiv. 12.

      Of the profitable task assigned him by the commissioners of the gabelle (or tax), Palissy has left some memorial in his spirited account of the salt marshes of Saintonge. The work with which he was intrusted was to make a plan of the district adjoining the western coast line, where was the celebrated salt-marsh, which yielded the largest supply of salt. At that time Saintonge was the chief source of salt in France, until it was obtained more abundantly from Brittany, and a large sum was gathered into the royal revenue from the tax produced by this article. But with all the skill and energy of taxation, difficulties and fraud still perplexed and threatened the tax receivers; and in the year 1543, Francis I, after trying various means for enforcing the payment of the gabelle, determined on a new and more stringent system, in consequence of which it became necessary that an accurate survey should be taken and new maps prepared.

      What chiefly interests us in this matter of the surveying is the fact that the islands Oléron, Allevert, and Marepènes – called the Saintonic Isles – which adjoin and form part of this marshy district, were a favourite resort for the persecuted refugees, who brought the Reformed tenets into Saintonge. These districts being remote from the public roads, in fact being an intricate labyrinth of marshes, afforded a safe hiding-place, and there several “Reformed monks” had established themselves; some taking to a little trade, others keeping village-schools, and finding sundry means of gaining a livelihood, without being known. As it was impossible for large ships to approach the low flat coast, one of the chief difficulties in ordering the marshes was to form channels of communication by which the salt made on them might be conveyed to the open sea. An immense amount of money and labour had been expended in the construction of dykes, canals, or passages – of which there was a perfect net-work, extending many miles – to afford the means of bringing up small barques or vessels, which thus penetrated the flat country, and conveyed the salt from thence. So intricate was this labyrinthine communication, that a stranger inclosed therein without a guide, would have been wholly unable to thread his way, or extricate himself from their meshes. During the winter season, all these marshes were flooded, in order that the clay which formed the foundation of the dykes or canals, might be protected by the water from the destructive bite of the frost; and thus, for a considerable part of the year, all communication was blocked up, or wholly cut off. What an admirable place of refuge must this district have afforded to men hunted like partridges upon the mountains! Accordingly here the three refugees brought by Hamelin, together with many others similarly circumstanced, had found shelter: men these, whose guileless lives and active charity commended them to the esteem of the poor peasants among whom they had sought a home. They visited in their cottages, ministered, as best they could, to their wants, and ventured by degrees to promulgate those spiritual truths, for the sake of which they had suffered the loss of all worldly goods, and were prepared to yield life itself. At first their instructions were cautiously given. They spoke in parables, and with hidden meaning, until they were assured they should not be betrayed. Slowly, but steadily, the leaven had begun to work, and it was shortly after Palissy had completed his task (which involved no slight labour, and occupied him more than a year), that a report came to the ears of the bishop of Saintes, that the place was full of Lutherans, whom it was highly desirable to extirpate without delay.

      The devil never wants for agents to execute his malicious purposes; and at this juncture, a man of “perverse and evil life,” named Collardeau (a fiscal attorney), set busily to work to discover the lurking places of the heretics. In that day, Saintes was an extensive and lucrative bishopric, including more than 700 parishes, and its bishop was an august personage, in whose veins flowed “the blood of St. Louis,” Charles, cardinal of Bourbon, brother of the king of Navarre, then twenty-three years of age. His fitting place was the court, and, accordingly, there he abode, taking small note of the heretical doings among the poor villagers of the Saintonic isles.

      With zeal worthy a good cause, Collardeau not only repeatedly wrote to this high dignitary, preferring his charges, but eventually crowned his energetic efforts by a journey to the capital, and by these means he succeeded in obtaining a commission from the bishop and the parliament of Bordeaux, with ample funds for carrying out his designs. Thus furnished, he proceeded to work upon the cupidity of certain judges, with whom he tampered so successfully that he procured the arrest of the preacher of St. Denis, a small town at the extremity of the isle of Oléron, named brother Robin, a man of such metal, that the principal anxiety had been to lay hand upon him by way of example. Shortly after, another preacher named Nicole was taken; and a few days later a similar fate overtook the schoolmaster at Gimosac, a man much beloved of the inhabitants, to whom he preached on Sundays. This last arrest keenly touched the heart of Palissy. He knew and esteemed the good brother, and had intrusted to his care his little Nicole, who had been placed at the school of Gimosac from the time Bernard had made his survey of the marshes. The poor child wept bitterly as he described to his parents the grievous parting his young eyes had witnessed; for, undaunted by the threats of their cruel enemies, the poor villagers accompanied, with prayers, tears, and lamentations, their beloved instructor to the shores of their little island. Alas! there, perforce, they parted never to meet on earth again.

      It was the eve of St. John, the twenty-third of June, 1546, when the citizens of Saintes beheld a strange and ominous scene, the commencement of the horrors subsequently СКАЧАТЬ