the chair,
examined it and assured himself that it was Marietta's own and no other.
Then he carefully folded it up and laid it on the bench. His brows were
contracted as if he were in great pain, and his face was pale, but his
eyes were still angry.

Giovanni knew the signs of his father's wrath and dared not speak to him
yet..

"Is this the evidence on which you have had my man arrested?" asked
Beroviero, sitting down in the big chair and fixing his gaze on his son.

"By no means," answered Giovanni, with all the coolness he could
command. "If it pleases you to hear my story from the beginning I will
tell you all. If you do not hear all, you cannot possibly understand."

"I am listening," said old Beroviero, leaning back and laying his hands
on the broad wooden arms of the chair.

"I shall tell you everything, exactly as it happened," said Giovanni,
"and I swear that it is all true."

Beroviero reflected that in his experience this was usually the way in
which liars introduced their accounts of events. For truth is like a
work of genius: it carries conviction with it at once, and therefore
needs no recommendation, nor other artificial support.

"After you left," Giovanni continued, "I came here one morning, out of
pure friendliness to Zorzi, and as we talked I chanced to look at those
things on the shelf. When I admired them, he admitted rather reluctantly
that he had made them, and other things which you have in your house."

Beroviero gravely nodded his assent to the statement.

"I asked him to make me something," Giovanni went on to say, "but he
told me that he had no white glass in the furnace, and that what was
there was the result of your experiments."

Again Beroviero bent his head.

"So I asked him to bring his blow-pipe to the main furnace room, where
they were still working at that time, and we went there together. He at
once made a very beautiful piece, and was just finishing it when a bad
accident happened to him. Another man let his blow-pipe fly from his
hand and it fell upon Zorzi's foot with a large lump of hot glass."

Beroviero looked keenly at Giovanni.

"You know as well as I that it could not have been an accident," he
said. "It was done out of spite."

"That may be," replied Giovanni, "for the men do not like him, as you
know. But Zorzi accepted it as being an accident, and said so. He was
badly hurt, and is still lame. Nella dressed the wound, and then
Marietta came with her."