called the Ballarin, has the presumption and effrontery to sell the said vessels, openly admitting that he has made them.  And they are well made, with diabolical skill, and the sale of the said vessels is a great injury to the glass-blowers of Murano, and to the honourable Guild, besides being an affront to the Republic.  I, the aforesaid Giovanni, was indeed unable to believe that such monstrous wickedness could exist.  I therefore went into the furnace room myself, and there I found the said Zorzi, called the Ballarin, working alone and making a certain piece in the form of a beaker.  And though he knows me, that I am the son of his master, he is so lost to all shame, that he continued to work before me, as if he were a glass-blower, and though I fanned myself in order not to die of heat, he worked before the fire, and felt nothing, raging like a devil.  I therefore offered to buy the beaker he was making and I put down a piece of money, and the said Zorzi, called the Ballarin, a liar, a thief and an assassin, took the said piece of money, and set the said beaker within the annealing oven of the said furnace, wherein I saw many other pieces of fine workmanship, and he said that I should have the said beaker when it was annealed.  Wherefore I, being for the time the Master of the honourable Guild in the stead of the said Angelo, entreat your Magnificence on behalf of the said Guild to interfere and act for the preservation of our ancient rights and privileges, and for the honour of the Republic.  Moreover, I entreat your Magnificence to send a force by night, in order that there may be no scandal, to take the said Zorzi, called the Ballarin, and to bind him, and carry him to Venice, that he may be tried for his monstrous crimes, and be questioned, even with torture, as to others which he has certainly committed, and be exiled from all the dominions of the Republic for ever on pain of being hanged, that in this way our laws may be maintained and our privileges preserved.  Moreover, I will give any further information of the same kind which your Magnificence may desire.  At Murano, in the house of Angelo Beroviero, my father, this third day of July, in the year of the Salvation of the World fourteen hundred and seventy, Giovanni Beroviero, the glass-maker.”

Giovanni had taken a long time in the composition of this remarkable document.  He sat in his linen shirt and black hose, but he had paused often to fan himself with a sheet of paper, and to wipe the perspiration from his forehead, for although he was a lean man he suffered much from the heat, owing to a weakness of his heart.