wise to stay in the house while the fit lasted. Marietta alone
was safe. As for her brothers, though the elder was nearly forty years
old, it was not long since his father had given him a box on the ears
which made him see simultaneously all the colours of all the glasses
ever made in Murano before or since. It is true that Giovanni had
timidly asked to be told one of the secrets for making fine red glass
which old Angelo had learned long ago from old Paolo Godi of Pergola,
the famous chemist; and these secrets were all carefully written out in
the elaborate character of the late fifteenth century, and Angelo kept
the manuscript in an iron box, under his own bed, and wore the key on a
small silver chain at his neck.

He was a big old man, with fiery brown eyes, large features, and a very
pale skin. His thick hair and short beard had once been red, and streaks
of the strong colour still ran through the faded locks. His hands were
large, but very skilful, and the long straight fingers were discoloured
by contact with the substances he used in his experiments.

He was jealous by nature, rather than suspicious. He had been jealous of
his wife while she had lived, though a more devoted woman never fell to
the lot of a lucky husband. Often, for weeks together, he had locked
the door upon her and taken the key with him every morning when he left
the house, though his furnaces were almost exactly opposite, on the
other side of the narrow canal, so that by coming to the door he could
have spoken with her at her window. But instead of doing this he used to
look through a little grated opening which he had caused to be made in
the wall of the glass-house; and when his wife was seated at her window,
at her embroidery, he could watch her unseen, for she was beautiful and
he loved her. 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