Palissy the Huguenot Potter

The governor of Nismes, a ferocious old man, had treated the Huguenots with the utmost barbarity, and had plundered and banished great numbers of them, who had retired to a neighbouring town. Among those left in Nismes was a carpenter, named Maderon, who resolved to deliver the town into the hands of his exiled brethren, and for that purpose took advantage of the famous fountain, the abundant waters of which flowed between the gate of Carmes and the castle, through a channel which was closed by a grate. Just above, and close by the castle, a sentinel was placed, who was relieved every hour. When he was about to leave he was accustomed to ring a bell, in order to advertise the soldier who was to relieve him, to come and take his place. A short interval always elapsed between the departure of one soldier and the arrival of the other, and Maderon having observed this, undertook, in those moments, to file asunder the bars of the grate.

He executed his purpose thus. In the evening he went down into the ditch, with a cord fastened round his body, the end of which was pulled by a friend when the soldier quitted his post, and again, when the other arrived. Maderon worked during these few moments, and then ceasing, waited in patience till another hour elapsed. In the morning he covered his work with mud and wax. In this manner did this indefatigable man work for fifteen nights, the noise he made being drowned by the rushing of the waters. It was not till his work was nearly completed that he informed the exiles of his success, and invited them to take possession of the town. They appear to have wanted courage for the undertaking; and while irresolute, a flash of lightning, though the weather was otherwise serene, terrified and put them to flight; but their minister, pulling them by their sleeves, exhorted them to come back, saying, “Courage! this lightning shows that God is with us.”

Twenty of them entered the town, and being joined by others who were exasperated at the cruelty of the governor, it was taken, and the castle surrendered a few days after. “That was truly an admirable occurrence,” said Bernard. “And the results were very important, since the town, by the large supplies it afforded, was of great service to the army of the princes during the ensuing spring.” “There will doubtless be many historians who will employ themselves upon these matters,” said Palissy; “and the better to describe the truth, I should think it wise that in each town there should be persons deputed to write faithfully the things that have been done during these troubles. I have myself already given a short narrative of what befell when I was resident in Saintonge, and I have left others to write of those things which themselves have witnessed. At present I am engaged in preparing a volume of Discourses on Natural Objects, of practical use to agriculturists and others, and I purpose, in the Lectures I have just commenced, to discuss various positions with reference to these matters, to which end, as you know, I have invited interruption, contradiction, and discussion, from those who may attend them.”

Palissy referred, in these words, to an undertaking which we find he commenced in the Lent of the year 1575, and which he carried on, for several seasons, annually. “Considering,” he says, “that I had employed much time in the study of earths, stones, waters, and metals, and that old age pressed me to multiply the talents which God had given me, I thought good to bring forward to light those excellent secrets, in order to bequeath them to posterity.”

But, like a true philosopher, he was anxious, first, to subject his theories to the test of keen criticism. Free discussion was, he knew, the best friend to the true interests of science, and he resolved, therefore to invite about him the most learned persons then resident in the capital, and to meet them in his lecture room to state to them his opinions, and to hear their arguments in reply. He set about doing this in a peculiar manner, which he describes. “Thus debating in my mind, I decided to cause notices to be affixed to the street corners in Paris, in order to assemble the most learned doctors, and others, to whom I would promise to demonstrate, in three lessons, all I have learned concerning fountains, stones, metals, and other natures. And, in order that none might come but the most learned and curious, I put in my placards that none should have admission without payment of a dollar. I did this partly to see whether I could extract from my hearers some contradiction which might have more assurance of truth than the arguments I should propound; knowing well that, if I spoke falsely, there would be Greeks and Latins who would resist me to my face, and who would not spare me, as well on account of the dollar I should have taken from each, as on account of the time I should have caused them to misspend. For there were very few of my hearers who could not elsewhere have extracted profit out of something during the time spent by them at my lessons. Also, I put in my placards that if the things therein promised did not prove trustworthy, I would restore the quadruple.”

The result of this experimental course was most successful. “Thanks be to God,” says the triumphant lecturer, “never man contradicted me a single word.”

Of the character of the audience whom Palissy attracted around him in his museum (as he called his cabinet of natural history), on this occasion, we are fully informed. He has given a list of more than thirty of them, including many skilful physicians, celebrated surgeons, grand seigneurs, gentlemen, and titled ecclesiastics, also some of the legal profession, and others, who were drawn together by a common love of scientific research. These were no idlers, but an assemblage of the choicest students – a sort of Royal Society, instituted for the occasion – who sat listening to the self-taught philosopher, the wise and vigorous old man, who, illustrating his cases as he went on, by specimens of the things about which he spoke, turned his cabinet into a lecture-room, where he delivered the first course of lectures upon natural history ever given in the French metropolis, held in the first natural history museum ever thrown open to the public there. Supported by the favourable opinion of such judges – than whom he could not have “more faithful witnesses, nor men more assured in knowledge,” Bernard “took courage to discourse” of various matters concerning which he had attained a surprising degree of knowledge.

The science taught by the self-educated potter was such as has entitled him, in the present day, to the admiration of men like Buffon, Haller, and Cuvier.

CHAPTER XVI

“Be thou faithful unto death.”

    – Revelation ii. 10.

“The number of my years hath given me courage to tell you that, a short time since, I was considering the colour of my beard, which caused me to reflect on the few days which remain to me before my course shall end: and that has led me to admire the lilies and the corn, and many kinds of plants, whose green colours are changed into white when they are ready to yield their fruits. Thus, also, certain trees become hoary when they feel their natural vegetative power is about to cease. A like consideration has reminded me that it is written, ‘Better is the fool who hides his folly, than the wise man who conceals his wisdom.’” We are peeping over Palissy’s shoulder as he bends his silvery locks over his writing-desk, and commences the dedication of his last volume of “Admirable Discourses.” Its superscription is as follows: – “To the very high and very powerful lord, the sire Antoine de Pons, knight of the order of the king, captain of a hundred gentlemen, and his majesty’s very faithful counsellor.” It is to his ancient patron he pays this tribute of loving respect. The good old sire was probably still more aged than himself, but his friendship had stood the test of years, and their intercourse had been renewed “in these later days,” with mutual pleasure and edification; their conversation having often turned on “divers sciences; to wit, philosophy, astrology, and other arts drawn from mathematics,” in which, “without any flattery,” Bernard declares himself convinced of the venerable knight’s marvellous ability, which “length of years had but augmented, instead of diminishing therefrom.”

It is pleasant to find Bernard thus steadfastly retaining the friendship of earlier years, but far more satisfactory to perceive that he had preserved his religion pure, and that the source whence his activity in the pursuit of knowledge was derived remained the same. At the close of a pious and laborious life, he remembered there was still something left which he might do. He had learned the wonderful secrets of nature to the glory of Him who had given him the hearing ear, and the seeing and observing eye; and now, recurring to the ruling motive of his life – that solemn idea of responsibility – he says, “It is a just and reasonable thing that the talents a man has received from God, he should endeavour to multiply, following his commandment. For which reason I have studied to bring unto the light the things of which it has pleased God to give me understanding. Having seen how many pernicious errors have been set abroad, I have betaken me to scratch in the earth for the space of forty years, and search into the entrails of the same, in order to understand the things which she produces in herself; and by such means I have found grace before God, who has caused me to understand secrets which have hitherto been unknown even to the learned.”

The book, thus dedicated and prefaced, contained the mature fruit of his studies as a naturalist. It is a collection of short treatises upon waters and fountains, metals, salts, stones, and earths, fire, enamels, and many other things, besides a treatise on marl, “very useful and necessary for those concerned in agriculture.” It was published at Paris in the year 1580, when its author was more than seventy years of age.

Four years later he was still lecturing in his museum, wandering out, now and then, to the river side and elsewhere to find an illustration of some lesson he was teaching. Thus, one winter’s day, he was seen standing beside the Seine, opposite the Tuileries, surrounded by a throng of listeners and objectors, among whom were several of the boatmen, who persisted in maintaining what Palissy was combatting: namely, that the floating masses of ice upon the river came from the bottom of the water. Among those who listened with interest and discernment to his instruction was the Sieur de la Croix Dumaine, who afterwards, in a volume published in 1584, described Palissy as “a natural philosopher, and a man of remarkably acute and ready wit, flourishing in Paris, and giving lessons in his science and profession.”

His was a vigorous old age, and he looked so much younger than he really was, that the Sieur supposed him little more than sixty. He might, in all probability, have continued thus to lecture and discourse about the wonders of the earth and waters some years longer; yet, even a few months later we should have vainly sought him in his beloved museum, or on his pleasant rambles around the environs of Paris. He was no longer there, but immured within the walls of yon grim fortress —

“That shame to manhood, and opprobrious more
To France, than all her losses and defeats
Old, or of later date; by sea or land;
Her house of bondage, worse than that of old
Which God avenged on Pharaoh – the Bastile.”

Although in his lectures and in his book he had abstained from all allusion to the struggles of the times, he was well-known for a staunch Huguenot, a man whom nothing could induce to change or to conceal his religion. They were indeed “evil days” in which his lot was cast. It had been sorrow and trouble enough to live in Paris then, and behold the vice, frivolity, and riot which prevailed. True, most true it is, that “between the excesses of depravity, and those of bigotry, there exist remarkable and intimate affinities.” Nowhere was this more strikingly exemplified than in the French court and capital during the rule of the house of Valois. The religious ideas of a court in which fanatical intolerance reigned, give sufficient proof of this. The vilest and most sanguinary passions were excited by the ceremonies of religion. The sermons of “the League” preachers were like torches, which set the kingdom in a blaze. The most impious and revolting spectacles were presented to the eyes of the mob. Thus, at Chartres, after the day of barricades, a Capuchin monk in the presence of Henry III., represented the Saviour ascending Mount Calvary. This wretched priest had drops of blood apparently trickling from his crown of thorns, and seemed with difficulty to drag the cross of painted card-board which he bore; while, ever and anon, he uttered piercing cries and fell beneath the load. The king himself, utterly steeped in the vicious pleasures of the court, became a member of the brotherhood of Flagellants, and, in a solemn procession, king, queen, and cardinal, headed the white, black, and blue friars, as they traversed the city barefoot, with heads uncovered, chaplets of skulls around their waists, and flogging their backs with cords till the blood flowed. The atrocities committed within many of the churches by the soldiers of “the League,” it is impossible here to relate. Since the massacre of St. Bartholomew the mobs of Paris had become familiar with blood, and a spirit of increased ferocity prevailed. Assassinations, tortures, and executions were frequent, and the extreme Roman Catholic party, to which the city had, from that time, been heartily attached, was pledged to exterminate the Huguenots.

At the head of “the League” was the Duke of Guise, the hero of the violent among the Roman Catholics, whom they desired to make king, instead of the worthless and despised Henry. At length, in the year 1585, the king, finding no other way of saving himself from the imminent peril which threatened him, made peace with the duke at the expense of the Reformers, and issued a decree, prohibiting the future exercise of the Reformed worship, and commanding all its adherents to abjure, or emigrate immediately, on pain of death and confiscation. This was no miserable court quarrel; it affected the interests of all, and touched the liberty, faith, fortune, and life of every man. So rigorously was the edict carried out, that the petition of a few poor women, who begged permission to dwell with their children in any remote corner of the kingdom, was refused. The most they could obtain was a safe conduct to England. Flight was out of the question for Palissy; and he remained at the mercy of men who respected neither age, virtue, nor misfortune. That he had friends who would gladly have protected him was known; nay, the king himself would willingly have sheltered one who had so long and skilfully served his mother. But the protection of the court was now unavailing; and the venerable man was sent to the Bastile.

Four years of life yet remained to Bernard; all spent within the walls of his prison-house. There, in communion with God and his own soul, he passed the residue of his days, shut out from the eye of man, within that gloomy fabric, the very thought of which inspires one’s soul with shrinking horror. Profound secrecy and mystery were among the most prominent features in the management of the Bastile, and he who was retained there to waste away life within its damp and dismal cells, was sedulously kept from all knowledge of what was passing in the busy world without, while no tidings of him were ever permitted to reach the ears of his kindred and former companions.

Debarred from the enjoyment of the beautiful sights of nature, the treasures of intellect, and the delights of social converse, fearful, indeed, was the lot of such a prisoner, unless sustained by divine consolations. We know not in what words our beloved Palissy would have clothed his thoughts, could he have spoken to us from his living tomb; but the following passage, contained in the narrative of one who was for some months a prisoner there, affords a pleasing example how, even in such circumstances, the soul has been sustained in hope. “I recollect,” says the narrator, “with humble gratitude, the first idea of comfort that shot across this gloom. It was the idea that neither massive walls, nor tremendous bolts, nor all the vigilance of suspicious keepers, could conceal me from the sight of God. This thought I fondly cherished, and it gave me infinite consolation in the course of my imprisonment, and principally contributed to enable me to support it with a degree of fortitude and resignation that I have since wondered at: I no longer felt myself alone.” So true it is,

“Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for a hermitage.
If I have freedom in my love,
And in myself am free,
Angels alone, that soar above,
Enjoy such liberty.”

And Palissy was a true Christian. He was free with the freedom wherewith Jesus Christ makes his people free. Therefore, as an old and faithful servant of the Lord, he was willing, for the testimony of Christ, to suffer affliction, even unto bonds; nay, he counted not his life dear unto him, so that he might win Christ, and be found in him.

One glimpse we have within his dungeon. Its doors are, for once, unbarred, and we are permitted to look, for the last time, at him whose history we have lovingly retraced.

Sentence of death, executed upon many who had remained staunch in their refusal to obey the royal edict, had been deferred, in the case of Palissy, only by the artifice of friends in power. But now, at length, the formidable Council of Sixteen became urgent for the public execution (already too long deferred) of so obstinate a heretic.

The king was loath to yield to these barbarous and bloodthirsty counsels, and determined to try what a personal interview might effect in bringing the recusant to a more pliant mood.

He went, accompanied by some of his gay courtiers, to visit and remonstrate with Bernard, whom he found not solitary, for his captivity was shared by two young girls, the daughters of Jacques Foucand, the attorney to the parliament, condemned, as he was, for the firm faith and resolute tenacity with which they refused to yield to the threats of their persecutors.

“My good man,” said the king, addressing himself to Bernard, “for many years you have been in the service of our family, and we have suffered you to retain your religion amidst fires and massacres; but at present I find myself so pressed by the Guises and my own people, that I am compelled to give you into the hands of my enemies. These two poor women, whom I see with you, are to be burned to-morrow; and so will you, unless you be converted.” “Sire,” replied Bernard, “I am ready to yield up my life for the glory of God. You say you feel pity for me. It is rather I that should pity you, who utter such words as these, ‘I am compelled.’ This is not the language of a king, and neither yourself nor the Guises, with all your people, shall compel me; for I know how to die.” “What an impudent rascal!” said one of the courtiers, who afterwards recorded the scene he had witnessed; “one might have supposed that he knew that line of Seneca, ‘Qui mori scit, cogi nescit.’”[14 - “He who knows how to die cannot be compelled.”]

Two months later there were fagots blazing in the Place de Grève, and monks gesticulated around the fires which were consuming to ashes the “two poor women” of whom the king had spoken, and who had found grace to continue steadfast to the end.

But Palissy still lived. Some powerful arm had sheltered him, and he was saved from the fiery trial. A few months longer he remained captive in the bonds of his prison-house, and then the message came for him also, Thou hast been faithful unto death, “I will give thee a crown of life.”

He died in the Bastile, in the year 1589.

THE END

notes

1

“A true Recipe, whereby all the inhabitants of France may learn to multiply and augment their possessions.”

2

They occupy forty-five plates in volume vi. of the “Musée des Monuments Français.”

3

By the body of his countrymen in his own day, his teaching was disregarded, and his writings passed, after a time, into unmerited oblivion. There were, however, a few who made practical use of his suggestions; and of the application of his theory on springs a most remarkable instance is on record.

Coulange la Vineuse, in Burgundy, was a place in which there was much wine and little water. In fact, the town was entirely destitute of that necessary element. Thrice had it fallen a prey to alarming conflagrations, and great efforts had been made, though with fruitless labour and expense, to supply its natural deficiency. At length the domain of the town having come into the possession of the chancellor d’Aguesseau, he invited M. Couplet, a distinguished mathematician and hydraulist, to consider the case, in September, 1705, the dry month of an unusually dry year. M. Couplet had studied the theory of springs as contained in the writings of Palissy, and to such good purpose did this shrewd pupil apply the knowledge he had derived from the pages of Master Bernard, that he was enabled to point out to his employer, not only on what spots to dig, but at what depth he would find water. In three months his prophecies having been fulfilled, a plenteous supply of water was brought into the town. The joy exceeded that of the most profitable vintage time; men, women, and children ran to drink; and the judge of the town, a blind man, travelled out, incredulous, to wave the waters through his hands, as a miser fingers gold. The grateful inhabitants testifiod their feelings by a device representing Moses bringing water from a rock encircled with vines, with the words, Utile dulci, and a laudatory inscription.

Mr. Morley, in his Life of Palissy (after quoting this anecdote from the quarto edition of his works), says, “Palissy has a statue somewhere I think. This, among other pictures, would look well upon its pedestal.”

4

“Die Asche will nicht lassen ab,
Sie staübt in alle Landen.
Hie hilft kein Bach, noch Loch, noch Grab.”

5