chamber, hardly more
than a closet, called the engraving-room, and bearing the same relation
to the former as the crypt where the cellarer jealously stores his Tokay
for the palate of a Kaiser holds to the acres of arches where lies the
_vin ordinaire_.

Here, in the full light of ample windows, before a high bench, over
which revolved with incredible rapidity a half-dozen small copper disks
fed with fine emery and oil, stood as many earnest-looking men, not
artisans, but artists, each of whom, vaguely guided by a design lightly
sketched upon the article under his hands, was developing it with an
ease and skill really beautiful to contemplate. Intricate arabesques,
single flowers of perfect grace, or rare groups of bloom, piles of
fruit, or spirited animal-life, all grew between the whirring copper
wheel and the nice hand, whose slightest turn or pressure had a meaning
and a just result.

Miselle watched the engraving of an intricate cipher beneath the
fantastic crest of some wealthy epicurean, who had ordered a complete
dessert-service of such charming forms and graceful designs that envy of
his taste, if not of his possessions, became a positive duty.

"Is there any limit to the range of your subjects?" asked Miselle, as
the artist added the last graceful curve to the griffin's tail, and
contemplated his finished work with quiet complacency.

"There may be, but I never found it. Whatever a pencil can draw this
wheel can cut," said he, with such a smile as Gottschalk might assume in
answering the query as to whether the score could be written that he
could not render.

Having now witnessed all the processes of glass-manufacture to be seen
at this time and place,[26] the party were conducted to the show-room,
passing on the way through a room where a number of young women were
engaged in painting and gilding vases, spoon-holders, lamps, and various
other articles in plain and colored glass. The colors used showed, for
the most part, but a very faint resemblance to the tints they were
intended to produce, and the gold appeared like a dingy brown paint;
but, as was explained by Cicerone, these-colors were to be fixed by
burning, or rather melting them into the surface of the glass, and this
process would at the same time evolve their true colors and brilliancy,
both of paint and gilding.

In the next room to this, several workmen were busy in fitting the metal
trimmings to such articles as lamps, lanterns, castors