Happy and hopeful, sunshiny of face and disposition, Bernard grew from childhood to youth.  Then, when he was about eighteen, there came into his heart a longing to try his fortune in the great world which lay beyond his forest home.  Like most country-bred boys of his age, he felt that he had grown too large for the parent nest and must try his wings elsewhere.  In his case there was, indeed, little to induce an ambitious boy to stay at home.  The trade of glass painting, which in previous years had been a profitable one, had at that time fallen somewhat out of favor, and there was not enough work to keep father and son busy.

When he shouldered his scanty wallet and bade farewell to father and mother, and the few friends and neighbors he knew in the straggling forest hamlet, Bernard Palissy closed the first chapter of his life.  The second was a long period of travel and self-education.

He wandered through the forest of Ardennes, making observations and collecting specimens of minerals, plants, reptiles, and insects.  He spent some years in the upper Pyrenees, at Tarbes.  From Antwerp in the east he bent his steps to Brest, in the most westerly part of Brittany, and from Montpellier to Nismes he traveled across France.  During his wanderings he supported himself by painting on glass, portrait painting (which he practiced after a fashion), surveying, and planning sites for houses and gardens.  In copying or inventing patterns for painted windows, he had acquired a knowledge of geometry and considerable skill in the use of a rule and compass.  His love of knowledge for its own sake made him follow up the study of geometry, as far as he could pursue it, and hence his skill as a surveyor.

At this time young Palissy had no other object in life than to learn.  His eager, inquiring mind was ever on the alert.  Wherever his travels led him, he sought information of men and nature, always finding the latter his chief instructor.  He painted and planned that he might live to probe her secrets.  But the time was fast approaching when a new interest should come into his life and overshadow all others.

After ten or twelve years of travel, he married and settled in Saintes where he pursued, as his services were required, the work of glass painter and surveyor.  Before long he grew dissatisfied with the dull routine of his daily life.  He felt that he ought to do more than make a living for his wife and children.  There were two babies now to be cared for as well as his wife, and he could not shoulder his wallet, as in the careless days of his boyhood, and wander away in search of knowledge or fortune.