Palissy the Huguenot Potter: A True Tale

by C. L. Brightwell

Would that this had been done from a higher motive than the love of art! Then he might one day have been among the number of those to whom shall be addressed the joyful words, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.”

Happily, it is not necessary for this narrative to dwell upon the well-known story of the massacre. Its fearful horrors are but too familiar to every reader of history. Bernard escaped being an eyewitness of them, as he happened to be at the time occupied about one of those commissions to which we have alluded, and which had carried him to Chaulnes, where he laid out the park according to a plan resembling that he described in his “Delectable Garden.”

There was one among the numerous men of science with whom Palissy associated who narrowly escaped destruction. This was Ambroise Paré, first surgeon to the king, who seems to have been a truly pious and excellent man. Having embraced the Reformed tenets, he steadily adhered to them, and despite the dangers of his situation, persisted in openly avowing his principles. As he had drawn upon himself the odium of heresy, and in addition to that, the rancorous jealousy of a host of practitioners in his art, he was a marked character; and Charles IX., who owed his life to the skill of Paré, and is said to have “loved him infinitely,” took measures to secure his safety. “I will tell you, my friend,” said he, describing that eventful night to Bernard, “how it fared with me, and what I saw and heard. I was in attendance upon the admiral [145] till late into the night, and was on the point of leaving him, when one of the royal hussars came, bringing a summons to me to repair immediately to the king. I obeyed, and found him in evident trepidation. As soon as he saw me, he exclaimed, ‘It is well that you have come, my dear Ambroise; you must remain with me this night, and in my chamber.’ So saying, he put me into his dressing room, adding, ‘Be sure you don’t stir from hence. It will never do to have you who can save our lives, massacred after this fashion.’ My hiding place adjoined a saloon where the king remained, and to which, after midnight, the queen came, evidently for the purpose of watching over her son. Four of the principal agitators were present, all urging him to preserve his courage, while his mother endeavoured, by every means in her power, to irritate his fiercer passions, and to silence his remorse. Though I could not hear all that passed, a few words occasionally reached my ears, and the appearance of Charles, and the words he had spoken to me, sufficed to convince me that a terrible crisis was at hand. At length a single pistol-shot rang through the silence. It was dark, the morning had not yet dawned, when at that signal, through the deep silence of the night, the tocsin of St. Germain’s was heard uttering its dreadful alarum. The queen and her two sons came, with stealthy tread, to the windows of the small closet through the king’s chamber, which overlooked the gate of the Louvre: and there those three miserable and guilty beings, opening the window, looked out, to watch the first outbreak of the dreadful tragedy. Presently shouts were heard of ‘Vive Dieu et le Roi,’ and armed men, issuing from the gates, trampled along the causeway, hastening to perform their bloody work.

“About five in the morning, I ventured to quit the dressing room, and, eager to see what was passing, gazed from one of the windows which looked in the direction of the Fauxbourg St. Germain’s, where Montgomery, Rohan, Pardaillan, and many of the Calvinist gentlemen lodged. As you know, it lies upon the opposite bank of the river from the Louvre; all had hitherto been quiet in that direction, but the sound of the tocsin, and the cries and screams which were heard across the river, had roused the Huguenots, who, suspecting some mischief, hastily prepared to cross the water and join their friends; but as they were about to embark, they saw several boats filled with Swiss and French guards, approaching, who began to fire upon them. It is said the king himself, from his closet window, was seen pointing and apparently directing their movements. They took the hint in time to save their lives by flight. They mounted their horses, and rode off at full speed.” “Thanks be to God, they escaped, as a bird from the hand of the fowler. May they live to avenge the blood of the saints.” “I shall never forget,” continued Paré, “the scene, when the broad light of an August day displayed, in all their extent, the horrors which had been committed. The bright, glowing sun, and the unclouded sky, and magnificent beauty over-head; and at our feet, the blood-stained waters of the Seine, and the streets bestrewn with mangled corpses. It was too terrible. To crown the whole, it was the holy sabbath.

“Towards the evening of the second day, the king called again for me. Sickened with horror and remorse, his mind and spirits were giving way. ‘Ambroise,’ said he, taking me into his cabinet, ‘I don’t know what ails me, but these last two or three days, I find both mind and body in great disorder. I see nothing around me but hideous faces, covered with blood. I wish the weak and innocent had been spared.’ I seized the moment of relenting in the unhappy monarch, and urged him to put an immediate stop to the massacre, and he did, in effect, issue orders by sound of trumpet, forbidding any further violence to be committed, upon pain of death.” “Alas!” said Palissy, “no hand was outstretched to save our French Phidias, Jean Goujon, the master of my comrade and co-worker, Bullant. He was struck down on his platform, while working on the Caryatides of the Louvre; with his chisel yet in his hand, he fell a corpse at the foot of the marble his genius was moulding into life.” “No power could restrain the violence of the rabble. In vain were the royal commands, and useless every effort of the bourgeoisie, and the higher orders. Day after day the barbarous slaughter continued. Ah! my friend,” concluded Paré, “that fatal night will form a black page in our history, which Frenchmen will vainly desire to erase, or to tear from its records.”—(“Feuillet de notre histoire à arracher, à brûler.”)

CHAPTER XV.

“He spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.”—1 Kings iv. 33.

We learn from his own words that king Solomon, amid all his magnificence and glory, found nothing truly satisfying to his spirit. He discovered that silver and gold, and costly apparel, and singing men and singing women, with all the luxuries of the East, sufficed not to give him happiness. They did not even keep him amused: he wanted something better. And a purer, more refined, and enduring delight was tasted by him when he turned the powers of his active and inquiring mind to the investigation of nature, the works of God’s hands, in the diversified and beautiful productions of the fields, woods, and lakes of Judea. He sought them out diligently, and then he “spake of” them—spake of the richly-varied productions of the animal kingdom, and “spake also of beasts, and of fowl, and of creeping things, and of fishes.” Very interesting it must have been to hear the great Solomon speaking of these works of God’s hands, and no wonder the sacred writers have recorded the fact. Most edifying of all to the thoughtful part of his audience it would be to reflect on the moral phenomenon he himself presented—taking his refreshment, his recreation, his pleasure, after the toils and disappointments of riches and of worldly honours, in considering the lilies, how they grew, and the fowls of the air, how God cared for them.

But if Solomon found, in this pursuit, a relief from ennui and satiety, how many, in all succeeding times, have found therein support and consolation amidst inevitable anxieties and painful trials. There have been persons who declared that it was the study of nature alone which made their condition tolerable, by diverting their minds from painful and oppressive thoughts. It must have been the same experience which caused Palissy, amid the terrible scenes of his day, to retire into his cabinet, or to wander in the roadside, among the fields and caves, searching after “things note-worthy and monstrous,” which he “took from the womb of the earth,” and placed among his other treasures, the accumulated hoard of long years. We find him the same Bernard still—unaltered by time and change of fortune; as simple-minded, as diligent in research, and as enthusiastic in utterance as at Saintes, in the days of his youth. He had found, too, some congenial associates and friends. Among them, we have seen, was Ambroise Paré, who had a great taste for natural history, and himself possessed a collection of valuable and curious specimens, especially of foreign birds, for which he was principally indebted to Charles IX., who used to send him many of the rarest and most valuable he obtained, to preserve.