“Have you come over from Venice on purpose to see me?” he asked, in something like wonder.

“Yes,” answered Venier with a smile.  “Why are you surprised?”

“Because it is so good of you.”

“You have solemnly sworn to do as much for me, and for all the companions of our society,” returned Venier, still smiling.  “We are to help each other under all circumstances, as far as we can, you know.  You are standing, and it must tire you, with those crutches.  Shall we sit down?  Tell me quite frankly, is there anything I can do for you?”

“Nothing you could ever do could make me more grateful than I am to you for coming,” answered Zorzi sincerely.

Venier took the crutches from his hands and helped him to sit on the bench.

“You are very kind,” Zorzi said.

Venier sat down beside him and asked him all manner of questions about his accident, and how it had happened.  Zorzi had no reason for concealing the truth from him.

“They all hate me here,” he said.  “It happened like an accident, but the man made it happen.  I do not think that he intended to maim me for life, but he meant to hurt me badly, and he did.  There was not a man or a boy in the furnace room who did not understand, for no workman ever yet let his blow-pipe slip from his hand in swinging a piece.  But I do not wish to make matters worse, and I have said that I believed it was an accident.”

“I should like to come across the man who did it,” said Venier, his eyes growing hard and steely.

“When I tried to hop to the furnace on one leg to save myself from falling, one of the men cried out that I was a dancer, and laughed.  I hear that the name has stuck to me among the workmen.  I am called the ‘Ballarin.’”

The ignoble meanness of Zorzi’s tormentors roused Venier’s generous blood.

“You will yet be their master,” he said.  “You will some day have a furnace of your own, and they will fawn to you.  Your nickname will be better than their names in a few years!”

“I hope so,” answered Zorzi.

“I know it,” said the other, with an energy that would have surprised those who only knew the listless young nobleman whom nothing could amuse or interest.

He did not stay very long, and when he went away he said nothing about coming again.  Zorzi went with him to the door.  He had asked the Dalmatian to tell old Beroviero of his visit.  Pasquale, who had never done such a thing in his life, actually went out upon the footway to the steps and steadied the gondola by the gunwale while Venier got in.

Giovanni Beroviero saw Venier come out, for it was near noon, and he had just come back from his own glass-house and was standing in the shadow of his father’s doorway, slowly fanning himself with his large cap before he went upstairs, for it had been very hot in the sun.  He did not know Zuan Venier by sight, but there was no mistaking the Venetian’s high station, and he was surprised to see that the nobleman was evidently on good terns with Zorzi.