ther just a very little, so as to fill up the pores as it
were, and make a smoother surface. If this were not done, it would fly
all to pieces the first time it was put into hot water."

"The cut glass is not annealed, then?"

"Oh, yes, after it is blown it is; and although the grinding takes off
part of the surface, I suppose it fills up the pores at the same time."

"Cut glass is more apt to break in hot water than pressed or simply
blown glass," remarked Madame.

"And is all cut glass blown in the first place?" asked Optima.

"No, Miss, a good deal of it is pressed and then ground, either wholly
or in part; but this is not so clear or free from waves as the blown.
Out here is a man blowing _liqueur_-glasses. Perhaps you would like to
see that."

The idea of blowing a bubble of glass into so intricate a shape, and
timing the process so that the brittle material should harden only when
it had reached the desired form, struck Miselle's mind as very
incredible; and she followed Cicerone with much curiosity to another
furnace, where one man, blow-pipe in hand, was dipping up a small
quantity of the liquid glass, and, having blown into it just long enough
to make a stout little bubble, laid the pipe across the iron arms of a
bench, where sat another operator, who immediately began to roll the
pipe up and down the arms of his chair, while with a supple iron
instrument, shaped like sugar-tongs with flattened bowls, he laid hold
of the bubble, and, while elongating it into a tube, brought the lower
extremity first to a point and then to a stem. To the end of this the
assistant now touched his pontil, upon whose end he had taken up a
little more glass, and this, being twisted in a ring round the foot of
the stem, divided from the pontil by a huge pair of scissors,
dexterously shaped with the plyers, and finally smoothed with a
battledoor, became the foot of the wine-glass. The heated pontil was now
applied exactly to the centre of this foot, the top of the glass divided
from the blow-pipe by the application of cold iron, and the whole thrust
for a few moments into the mouth of the furnace to soften, while the
first man laid another pipe with another bubble at the end before the
operator upon the bench, who recommenced the same process.

The first glass, meantime, rendered once more ductile by heat, was
passed to another man upon another bench, who, keeping up all the while
the rotatory motion necessary to preserve the f