Zorzi looked at him coldly a moment, but said nothing.  They did not mean that he was a thief, except in the sense that he had stolen his knowledge of their art.  He went on to make the handle of the ampulla, an easy matter compared with making the spout.  But the highest part of glass-blowing lies in shaping graceful curves, and it is often in the smallest differences of measurement that the pieces made by Beroviero and Zorzi—­preserved intact to this day—­differ from similar things made by lesser artists.  Yet in those little variations lies all the great secret that divides grace from awkwardness.  Zorzi now had the whole vessel, with its spout and handle, on the pontil.  It was finished, but he could still ornament it.  His own instinct was to let it alone, leaving its perfect shape and airy lightness to be its only beauty, and he turned it thoughtfully as he looked at it, hesitating whether he should detach it from the iron, or do more.

“If you have finished your nonsense, let me come back to my work,” said Piero behind him.

Zorzi did not turn to answer, for he had decided to add some delicate ornaments, merely to show Giovanni that he was a full master of the art.  The dark-browed man had just collected a heavy lump of glass on the end of his blow-pipe, and was blowing into it before giving it the first swing that would lengthen it out.  He and Piero exchanged glances, unnoticed by Zorzi, who had become almost unconscious of their hostile presence.  He began to take little drops of glass from the furnace on the end of a thin iron, and he drew them out into thick threads and heated them again and laid them on the body of the ampulla, twisting and turning each bit till he had no more, and forming a regular raised design on the surface.  His neighbour seemed to get no further with what he was doing, though he busily heated and reheated his lump of glass and again and again swung his blow-pipe round his head, and backward and forward.  The foreman was too much interested in Zorzi to notice what the others were doing.

Zorzi was putting the last touches to his work.  In a moment it would be finished and ready to go to the annealing oven, though he was even then reflecting that the workmen would certainly break it up as soon as the foreman turned his back.  The man next to him swung his blow-pipe again, loaded with red-hot glass.

It slipped from his hand, and the hot mass, with the full weight of the heavy iron behind it, landed on Zorzi’s right foot, three paces away, with frightful force.  He uttered a sharp cry of surprise and pain.  The lovely vessel he had made flew from his hands and broke into a thousand tiny fragments.  In excruciating agony he lifted the injured foot from the ground and stood upon the other.  Not a hand was stretched out to help him, and he felt that he was growing dizzy.  He made a frantic effort to hop on one leg towards the furnace, so as to lean against the brickwork.  Piero laughed.