At length he was no longer able to carry
on his experiments in his own furnace because of the heavy cost of
fuel; but he bought more potsherds, broke them up as before into
three or four hundred pieces, and, covering them with chemicals,
carried them to a tile-work a league and a half distant from
Saintes, there to be baked in an ordinary furnace. After the
operation he went to see the pieces taken out; and, to his dismay,
the whole of the experiments were failures. But though
disappointed, he was not yet defeated; for he determined on the
very spot to "begin afresh."
His business as a land-measurer called him away for a brief season
from the pursuit of his experiments. In conformity with an edict
of the State, it became necessary to survey the salt-marshes in the
neighbourhood of Saintes for the purpose of levying the land-tax.
Palissy was employed to make this survey, and prepare the requisite
map. The work occupied him some time, and he was doubtless well
paid for it; but no sooner was it completed than he proceeded, with
redoubled zeal, to follow up his old investigations "in the track
of the enamels." He began by breaking three dozen new earthen
pots, the pieces of which he covered with different materials which
he had compounded, and then took them to a neighbouring glass-
furnace to be baked.
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