“He is a dancer!” he cried.  “He is a ’ballarino’!” The others all laughed, too, and the name remained his as long as he lived—­he was Zorzi Ballarin.

The old foreman came to help him, seeing that he was really injured, for no one had quite realised it at first.  Savagely as they hated him, the workmen would not have tortured him, though they might have killed him outright if they had dared.  Excepting Piero and the man who had hurt him, the workmen all went on with their work.

He was ghastly pale, and great drops of sweat rolled down his forehead as he reached the foreman’s chair and sat down:  but after the first cry he had uttered, he made no sound.  The foreman could hear how his teeth ground upon each other as he mastered the frightful suffering.  Giovanni came, and stood looking at the helpless foot, smashed by the weight that had fallen upon it and burned to the bone in an instant by the molten glass.

“I cannot walk,” he said at last to the foreman.  “Will you help me?”

His voice was steady but weak.  The foreman and Giovanni helped him to stand on his left foot, and putting his arms round their necks he swung himself along as he could.  The dark man had picked up his blow-pipe and was at work again.

“You will pay for that when the master comes back,” Piero said to him as Zorzi passed.  “You will starve if you are not careful.”

Zorzi turned his head and looked the dark man full in the eyes.

“It was an accident,” he said faintly.  “You did not mean to do it.”

The man looked away shamefacedly, for he knew that even if he had not meant to injure Zorzi for life, he had meant to hurt him if he could.

As for Giovanni, he was puzzled by all that had happened so unexpectedly, for he was a dull man, though very keen for gain, and he did not understand human nature.  He disliked Zorzi, but during the morning he had become convinced that the gifted young artist was a valuable piece of property, and not, as he had supposed, a clever flatterer who had wormed himself into old Beroviero’s confidence.  A man who could make such things was worth much money to his master.  There were kings and princes, from the Pope to the Emperor, who would have given a round sum in gold for the beautiful ampulla of which only a heap of tiny fragments were now left to be swept away.

The two men brought Zorzi across the garden to the door of the laboratory.  Leaning heavily on the foreman he got the key out, and Giovanni turned it in the lock.  They would have taken him to the small inner room, to lay him on his pallet bed, but he would not go.

“The bench,” he managed to say, indicating it with a nod of his head.

There was an old leathern pillow in the big chair.  The foreman took it and placed it under Zorzi’s head.

“We must get a surgeon to dress his wound,” said the foreman.

“I will send for one,” answered Giovanni.  “Is there anything you want now?” he asked, with an attempt to speak kindly to the valuable piece of property that lay helpless before him.