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But when thou speakest of genii and the bowels of the earth, thou wilt not, I hope, take it amiss if I crave better proof than thy word that the devil has taken to glass-making. For glass, and nothing else, credit me, thy jewel is." "And the gold?" gasped Otto. "There is just as much gold in thy ring as sufficeth to gild handsomely a like superficies of brass, which is not saying much."
Almost every European nation has tried its hand at glass-making. It is curious, too, to notice how each differs from the others. The Bohemians, for instance, were famous glass-makers, and their work, which primarily imitated that of the Venetians, is known the world over." "What sort of glass is it? Could I tell it if I should see it?"
In Italy silk-making like glass-making was held to be one of the most honorable of occupations; and silk-makers intermarried with the nobility, being accorded equality of rank with the best born families." Père Benedict paused for breath; then gave an odd little chuckle. "I could tell you many an amusing tale of the early uses of silk," he said.
"Mosaic makers, you know, Jean, began crude attempts at making pictures in glass thousands of years ago, for glass-making was familiar to the Egyptians as well as to the Phoenicans and Syrians. The Greeks and Romans, too, were great glass-makers. So glass-making came down through the ages. The Byzantine churches usually were lighted by a row of tiny glass windows round the base of the dome.
The practitioners of the Sacred Art of Egypt must have been acquainted with many operations which we now class as belonging to applied chemistry; witness, their jewellery, pottery, dyes and pigments, bleaching, glass-making, working in metals and alloys, and their use of spices, essential oils, and soda in embalming, and for other purposes.
All the way home the young Venetian was peculiarly silent. His national pride had received a blow. Bohemia had surpassed Venice at its own trade, the art of glass-making! It was the next morning while Mr.
Ten Jews dwell here, engaged in glass-making, and at their head are R. Mordecai, R. Chayim, and R. Samuel. From here it is two days' journey to Lega, or Ladikiya, where there are about 100 Jews, at their head being R. Chayim and R. Joseph. They call him the Sheik Al Hashishim, and he is known as their Elder. At his word these mountaineers go out and come in.
I confess, too, that I like to go into one of these big glass hives, or rather glass-making hives, and see the workmen at their "chairs" blowing and moulding the hot ductile glass into its appointed form and patterns; and I like also to see the curling wreaths of smoke ascend and disappear through the orifice at the top of the dome.
After another year passed in this new pursuit, experimenting on every imaginable substance glass, gems, flints, crystals, artificial crystals formed of the alloy of various vitreous materials in short, having constructed as many varieties of lenses as Argus had eyes I found myself precisely where I started, with nothing gained save an extensive knowledge of glass-making.
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.
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