Marietta: A Maid of Venice by F. Marion Crawford (top ten ebook reader TXT) 📖

to avoid cutting his hands badly, and to put them back again, for the shape of the jar would not admit of his employing even one of the small iron shovels used for filling the crucibles.

With considerable difficulty he moved a large chest, that contained sifted white sand, out of the dark corner in which it stood and placed it diagonally so as to leave a triangular space behind it. To guard against the sound of the broken glass being heard from without, he shut the window, in spite of the heat, and having arranged in the corner one of the sacks used for bringing the cakes of kelp-ashes from Egypt, he began to fill it with the broken glass he brought from the jar in a bucket. When he judged that he had taken out more than half the contents, he took the iron box from the annealing oven. It was hard to carry it under the arm by which he walked with a stick, the other hand being necessary to move the crutch, and as he reached the jar he felt that it was slipping. He bent forward and it fell with a crash, bedding itself in the smashed glass. Zorzi drew a long breath of satisfaction, for the hardest part of the work was done.

He tried to heave up the sack from the corner, but it was far too heavy, and he was obliged to bring back more than half of what it held by bucketfuls, before he was able to bring the rest, dragging it after him across the floor. It was finished at last, he had shaken out the sack carefully over the jar's mouth, and he had moved the sand-chest back to its original position. No one would have imagined that the broken glass had been removed and put back again. The box was safely hidden now.

He was utterly exhausted when he dropped into the big chair, after washing the dust and blood from his hands—for it had been impossible to do what he had done without getting a few scratches, though none of them could have been called a cut. He sat quite still and closed his eyes. The box was safe now. It was not to be imagined that any one should ever suspect where it was, and on that point he was well satisfied. His only possible cause of anxiety now might be that if anything should happen to him, the master would be in ignorance of what he had done. But he saw no reason to expect anything so serious and his mind was at rest about a matter which had much disturbed him ever since Giovanni's visit.

The plan which he had attributed to the latter was not, however, the one which suggested itself to the younger Beroviero's mind. It would have been easy to carry out, and was very simple, and for that very reason Giovanni did not think of it. Besides, in his estimation it would be better to act in such a way as to get rid of Zorzi for ever, if that were possible.

On the Saturday night after Zorzi had hidden the box in the jar, the workmen cleared away the litter in the main furnace rooms and the order was given to let the fires go out. Zorzi sent word to the night boys who tended the fire in the laboratory that they were to come as usual. They appeared punctually, and to his surprise made no objection to working, though he had expected that they would complain of the heat and allege that their fathers would not let them go on any longer. On Sunday, according to the old rule of the house, no work was done, and Zorzi kept up the fire himself, spending most of the long day in the garden. On Sunday night the boys came again and went to work without a word, and in the morning they left the usual supply of chopped billets piled up and ready for use. Zorzi had rested himself thoroughly and went back to his experiments on that Monday with fresh energy.

The very first test he took of the glass that had been fusing since Saturday night was successful beyond his highest expectations. He had grown reckless after having spoiled the original mixtures by adding the copper in the hope of getting more of the wonderful red, and carried away by the love of the art and by the certainty of ultimate success which every man of genius feels almost from boyhood, he had deliberately attempted to produce the white glass for which Beroviero was famous. He followed a theory of his own in doing so, for although he was tolerably sure of the nature of the ingredients, as was every workman in the house, neither he nor they knew anything of the proportions in which Beroviero mixed the substances, and every glass-maker knows by experience that those proportions constitute by far the most important element of success.

Zorzi had not poured out the specimen on the table as he had done when the glass was coloured; on the contrary he had taken some on the blow-pipe and had begun to work with it at once, for the three great requisites were transparency, ductility, and lightness. In a few minutes he had convinced himself that his glass possessed all these qualities in an even higher degree than the master's own, and that was immeasurably superior to anything which the latter's own sons or any other glass-maker could produce. Zorzi had taken very little at first, and he made of it a thin phial of graceful shape, turned the mouth outward, and dropped the little vessel into the bed of ashes. He would have set it in the annealing oven, but he wished to try the weight of it, and he let it cool. Taking it up when he could touch it safely, it felt in his hand like a thing of air. On the shelf was another nearly like it in size, which he had made long ago with Beroviero's glass. There were scales on the table; he laid one phial in each, and the old one was by far the heavier. He had to put a number of pennyweights into the scale with his own before the two were balanced.

His heart almost stood still, and he could not believe his good fortune. He took the sheet of rough paper on which he had written down the precise contents of the three crucibles, and he carefully went over the proportions of the ingredients in the one from which he had just taken his specimen. He made a strong effort of memory, trying to recall whether he had been careless and inexact in weighing any of the materials, but he knew that he had been most precise. He had also noted the hour at which he had put the mixture into the crucible on Saturday, and he now glanced at the sand-glass and made another note. But he did not lay the paper upon the table, where it had been lying for two days, kept in place by a little glass weight. It had become his most precious possession; what was written on it meant a fortune as soon as he could get a furnace to himself; it was his own, and not the master's; it was wealth, it might even be fame. Beroviero might call him to account for misusing the furnace, but that was no capital offence after all, and it was more than paid for by the single crucible of magnificent red glass. Zorzi was attempting to reproduce that too, for he had the master's notes of what the pot had contained, and it was almost ready to be tried; he even had the piece of copper carefully weighed to be equal in bulk with the ladle that had been melted. If he succeeded there also, that was a new secret for Beroviero, but the other was for himself.

All that morning he revelled in the delight of working with the new glass. A marvellous dish with upturned edge and ornamented foot was the next thing he made, and he placed it at once in the annealing oven. Then he made a tall drinking glass such as he had never made before, and then, in contrast, a tiny ampulla, so small that he could almost hide it in his hand, with its spout, yet decorated with all the perfection of a larger piece. He worked on, careless of the time, his genius all alive, the rest a distant dream.

He was putting the finishing touches to a beaker of a new shape when the door opened, and Giovanni entered the laboratory. Zorzi was seated on the working stool, the pontil in one hand, the 'porcello' in the other. He glanced at Giovanni absently and went on, for it was the last touch and the glass was cooling quickly.

"Still working, in this heat?" asked Giovanni, fanning himself with his cap as was his custom.

There was a moment's silence. Then a sharp clicking sound and the beaker fell finished into the soft ashes.

"Yes, I am still at work, as you see," answered Zorzi, not realising that Giovanni would particularly notice what he was doing.

He rose with some difficulty and got his crutch under one arm. With a forked stick he took the beaker from the ashes and placed it in the annealing oven. Giovanni watched him, and when the broad iron door was open, he saw the other pieces already standing inside on the iron tray.

"Admirable!" cried Giovanni. "You are a great artist, my dear Zorzi! There is no one like you!"

"I do what I can," answered Zorzi, closing the door quickly, lest the hot end of the oven should cool at all.

"I should say that you do what no one else can," returned Giovanni. "But how lame you are! I had expected to find you walking as well as ever by this time."

"I shall never walk again without limping."

"Oh, take courage!" said Giovanni, who seemed determined to be both cheerful and flattering. "You will soon be as light on your feet as ever. But it was a shocking accident."

He sat down in the big chair and Zorzi took the small one by the table, wishing that he would go away.

"It is a pity that you had no white glass in the furnace on that particular day," Giovanni continued. "You said you had none, if I remember. How is it that you have it now? Have you changed one of the crucibles?"

"Yes. One of the experiments succeeded so well that it seemed better to take out all the glass."

"May I see a piece of it?" inquired Giovanni, as if he were asking a great favour.

It was one thing to let him test the glass himself, it was quite another to show him a piece of it. He would see it sooner or later, and he could guess nothing of its composition.

"The specimen is there, on the table," Zorzi answered.

Giovanni rose at once and took the piece from the paper on which it lay, and held it up against the light. He was amazed at the richness of the colour, and gave vent to all sorts of exclamations.

"Did you make this?" he asked at last.

"It is the result of the master's experiments."

"It is marvellous! He has made another fortune."

Giovanni replaced the specimen where it had lain, and as he did so, his eye fell on the phial Zorzi had made that morning. Zorzi had not put it into the annealing oven because it had been allowed to get quite cold, so that the annealing would have been imperfect. Giovanni took it up, and uttered a low exclamation of surprise at its lightness. He held it up and looked through it, and then he took it by the neck and tapped it sharply with his finger-nail.

"Take care," said Zorzi; "it is not annealed. It may fly."

"Oh!" exclaimed Giovanni. "Have you just made it?"

"Yes."

"It is the finest glass I ever saw. It is much better than what they had in the main furnaces the day you were hurt. Did you not find it so yourself, in working with it?"

Zorzi began to feel anxious as to the result of so much questioning. Whatever happened he must hide from Giovanni the fact that he had discovered a new glass of his own.

"Yes," he answered, with affected indifference. "I thought it was unusually good. I daresay there may be some slight difference in the proportions."

"Do you mean to say that my father does not follow any exact rule?"

"Oh yes. But he is always making experiments."

"He mixes all the materials for the main furnaces himself, does he not?" inquired Giovanni.

"Yes. He does it alone, in the room that is kept locked. When he has finished, the