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.