It is difficult to form any definite idea of the nature of the craft secrets of these Italians. It can hardly have related to the more obvious materials employed, for as early as 1555 (and it was only about the year 1548 that the great emigration of the Altarists began) the Oriental soda, the rocchetta of Neri, which was brought by Venetian galleys from Alexandria, had in France been already displaced by the Spanish soda or barilla, a material that has held its place until recent times. This barilla was made from the famous soda plant, the Salsola sativa, which, we are told, was grown from seed in various parts of the province of Murcia, and exported from the adjacent port of Alicante. So again the quartz pebbles from the bed of the Ticino, so highly prized by the early Venetian glass-makers, were early replaced by the pure white sand of Étaples.[[168]]

There is, however, in this connection, one point worth notice. It is impossible to prepare a workable glass from quartz and alkali alone; the presence of a certain quantity of lime is essential. Now in the forest glass—the verre de fougère—sufficient lime (or equivalent bases) is provided by the impurities in the crude potash employed; but this is no longer the case when the more carefully prepared Oriental or Spanish soda takes its place: it is now necessary to supply additional lime. It is not impossible that the secret of the shrewd Italians may have lain in this direction.

When speaking of the mediæval glass of France, I have brought forward some evidence to show that, by the fourteenth century at least, vessels of glass must have been produced in large quantities for domestic use. This of course was, without exception, verre de fougère, essentially the glass of the people, which for long was little influenced by the new Italian methods. It was this glass chiefly that was hawked round the country by itinerant vendors. Their cry was well known in Paris—‘Gentils verres, verres jolis—à deux liards les verres de pierre!’ Others, as in old days at Rome (see the quotation from Martial on [p. 82], note), collected broken glass to the cry of ‘Chambrières, regardez-y!—Voirre cassez, Voirre cassez!’[[169]] Bernard Palissy, writing towards the end of the sixteenth century, gives but a mean idea not only of the hawkers, but of the makers of glass in his day:—‘Je te prie, considère un peu les verres qui, pour avoir esté trop communs entre les hommes, sont devenuz à un prix si vil que la plupart de ceux qui les font vivent plus méchaniquement que ne font les crocheteurs de Paris ... et ces verres sont venduz et criez, par les villages, par ceux mêmes qui crient les vieux chapeaux et les vieilles ferrailles’ (quoted by Gerspach, p. 193).

It was only when the secrets of the pure cristallo and the application of enamels were introduced from Italy that glass began to take a more honourable position in France. We cannot safely trace back the foreign influence to an earlier date than the middle of the fifteenth century, and it was not brought into full play till just a century later.

The name of René, ‘king of Sicily and Jerusalem,’ and ruler under various titles in Provence, Anjou, and Lorraine, was at one time a name to conjure with in matters connected with art and literature, above all in the south of France. Of late years there has been a tendency to strip this much harassed king of many of his claims to distinction as a patron of the arts. There seems, however, every reason to connect his name with the introduction of the finer sorts of glass into France, not, of course, of the industry as a whole, though even this was at one time claimed for René. There is evidence to show that as early as 1443 a member of the Ferro family[[170]] of L’Altare was working for him at Goult, in Provence. This would be the earliest instance known to us of Italian glass-workers in France.

King René, we are told, presented to his nephew Louis XI. some pieces of glass ‘molt variolés et bien peincts.’ But we can hardly refer to so early a date the beaker of enameled glass formerly preserved at Aix, painted inside with the kneeling figure of the Magdalen by the side of her Master, so arranged that the former was only visible when the cup had been drained; so that, as the inscription quaintly expressed it:—

‘Qui bien boira

Dieu verra

Qui boira tout d’une haleine

Verra Dieu et la Madelaine.’