One day he saw a stranger standing by the water's edge,
gazing at her, and he went out and threw the man into the canal. When
she died, he said little, but he would not allow his own children to
speak of her before him. After that, he became almost as jealous of his
daughter, and though he did not lock her up like her mother, he used to
take her with him to the glass-house when the weather was not too hot,
so that she should not be out of his sight all day.
Moreover, because he needed a man to help him, and because he was afraid
lest one of his own caste should fall in love with Marietta, he took
Zorzi, the Dalmatian waif, into his service; and the three were often
together all day in the room where Angelo had set up a little furnace
for making experiments. In the year 1470 it was not lawful in Murano to
teach any foreign person the art of glass-making; for the glass-blowers
were a sort of nobility, and nearly a hundred years had passed since the
Council had declared that patricians of Venice might marry the
daughters of glass-workers without affecting their own rank or that of
their children. But old Beroviero declared that he was not teaching
Zorzi anything, that the young fellow was his servant and not his
apprentice, and did nothing but keep up the fire in the furnace, and
fetch and carry, grind materials, and sweep the floor.
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