“I owe it to you, I am sure,” answered Zorzi, turning grateful eyes to him.

“No, I assure you,” said the patrician.  “But I daresay it has made us all change our opinion of the Ten,” he added with a smile.  “Good-bye.  Let me come and see you at work at your own furnace before long.  I have always wished to see glass blown.”

Without waiting for more, he walked quickly away, waving his hand after he had already turned.

It was noon when Zorzi had folded his patent carefully and hidden it in his bosom, and he and Beroviero and Pasquale went out of the busy gateway under the outer portico.  Beroviero led the way to the right, and they passed Saint Mark’s in the blazing sun, and the Patriarch’s palace, and came to the shady landing, the very one at which the old man and his daughter had got out when they had come to the church to meet Contarini.  The gondola was waiting there, and Beroviero pushed Zorzi gently before him.

“You are still lame,” he said.  “Get in first and sit down.”

But Zorzi drew back, for a woman’s hand was suddenly thrust out of the little window of the ‘felse,’ with a quick gesture.

“There is a lady inside,” said Zorzi.

“Marietta is in the gondola,” answered Beroviero with a smile.  “She would not stay at home.  But there is room for us all.  Get in, my son.”

NOTE

The story of Zorzi Ballarin and Marietta Beroviero is not mere fiction, and is told in several ways.  The most common account of the circumstances assumes that Zorzi actually stole the secrets which Angelo Beroviero had received from Paolo Godi, and thereby forced Angelo to give him his daughter in marriage; but the learned Comm.  C.A.  Levi, director of the museum in Murano, where many works of Beroviero and Ballarin are preserved, has established the latter’s reputation for honourable dealing with regard to the precious secrets, in a pamphlet entitled “L’Arte del Vetro in Murano,” published in Venice, in 1895, to which I beg to refer the curious reader.  I have used a novelist’s privilege in writing a story which does not pretend to be historical.  I have taken eleven years from the date on which Giovanni Beroviero wrote his letter to the Podesta of Murano, and the letter itself, though similar in spirit to the original, is differently worded and covers somewhat different ground; I have also represented Zorzi as standing alone in his attempt to become an independent glass-blower, whereas Comm.  Levi has discovered that he had two companions, who were Dalmatians, like himself.  There is no foundation in tradition for the existence of Arisa the Georgian slave, but it is well known that beautiful Eastern slaves were bought and sold in Venice and in many other parts of Italy even at a much later date.

***End of the project gutenberg EBOOK Marietta***

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