"Has the fellow not finished his tricks yet?" asked Piero
discontentedly.
It would have given him pleasure to smash the beautiful thing to atoms
where it lay, almost within his reach. Zorzi began to make the spout,
for it was a large ampulla that he was fashioning. He drew the glass
out, widened it, narrowed it, cut it, bent it and finished off the
nozzle before he touched it with wet iron and made it drop into the
ashes. A moment later he had heated the thick end of it again and was
welding it over the hole he had made in the body of the vessel.
"The man has three hands!" exclaimed the foreman.
"And two of them are for stealing," added Piero.
"Or all three," put in the beetle-browed man who was working next to
Zorzi.
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.
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