“I am not afraid of any trouble, I tell you,” replied Giovanni.  “Please do what I ask.”

“Very well.  I will, but I take no responsibility before the master if there is a disturbance.  The men are in a bad humour and the weather is hot.”

“I will be responsible to my father,” said Giovanni.

“Very well,” repeated the old man.  “You are a glass-maker yourself, like the rest of us.  You know how we look upon foreigners who steal their knowledge of our art.”

“I wish to make sure that he has really stolen something of it.”

The foreman laughed outright.

“You will be convinced soon enough!” he said.  “Give your place to the foreigner, Piero,” he added, speaking to the man who had refused to move at Giovanni’s bidding.

Piero at once chilled the fresh lump of glass he had begun to fashion and smashed it off the tube into the refuse jar.  Without a word Zorzi took his place.  While he warmed the end of his blow-pipe at the ‘bocca’ he looked to right and left to see where the working-stool and marver were placed, and to be sure that the few tools he needed were at hand, the pontil, the ’procello,’—­that is, the small elastic tongs for modelling—­and the shears.  Piero’s apprentice had retired to a distance, as he had received no special orders, and the workmen hoped that Zorzi would find himself in difficulty at the moment when he would turn in the expectation of finding the assistant at his elbow.  But Zorzi was used to helping himself.  He pushed his blow-pipe into the melted glass and drew it out, let it cool a moment and then thrust it in again to take up more of the stuff.

The men went on with their work, seeming to pay no attention to him, and Piero turned his back and talked to the foreman in low tones.  Only Giovanni watched, standing far enough back to be out of reach of the long blow-pipe if Zorzi should unexpectedly swing it to its full length.  Zorzi was confident and unconcerned, though he was fully aware that the men were watching every movement he made, while pretending not to see.  He knew also that owing to his being partly self-taught he did certain things in ways of his own.  They should see that his ways were as good as theirs, and what was more, that he needed no help, while none of them could do anything without an apprentice.

The glass grew and swelled, lengthened and contracted with his breath and under his touch, and the men, furtively watching him, were amazed to see how much he could do while the piece was still on the blow-pipe.  But when he could do no more they thought that he would have trouble.  He did not even turn his head to see whether any one was near to help him.  At the exact moment when the work was cool enough to stand he attached the pontil with its drop of liquid glass to the lower end, as he had done many a time in the laboratory, and before those who looked on could fully understand how he had done it without assistance, the long and heavy blow-pipe lay on the floor and Zorzi held his piece on the lighter pontil, heating it again at the fire.