small Aquarius ever
and anon fetches tumblers of water from a tap outside or glasses of red
wine, and a soft voice at your ear, in whatever language you happen to
be, supplies a commentary on the proceedings. Beware of listening to it
with too much interest, for it is this voice which, when the
glass-blowing flags, is proposing to sell you something. The "entrance"
may be "free," but the exit rarely is so.

Let me describe a particular feat. After a few minutes, in sauntered a
little lean detached man with a pointed beard and a long cigar, who
casually took from a workman in the foreground a hollow iron rod, at the
end of which was a more than commonly large lump of the glowing mass.
This he whirled a little, by a rotatory movement of the rod between the
palms of his hands, and then again dipped it into the heart of the
flames, fetching it out more fiery than ever and much augmented. This
too he whirled, blowing down the pipe first (but without taking his
cigar from his mouth) again and again, until the solid lump was a great
glistening globe. The artist--for if ever there was an artist it is
he--carried on this exhausting task with perfect nonchalance, talking
and joking with the others the while, but never relaxing the
concentration of his hands, until there came a moment when the globe was
broken from the original rod and fixed in some magical way to another.
Again it went into the furnace, now merely for heat and not for any
accretion of glass, and coming out, behold it was a bowl; and so, with
repeated visits to the flames, on each return wider and shallower, it
eventually was finished as an exact replica of the beautiful greeny-blue
flower-dish on a neighbouring table. The artist, still smoking, then
sauntered out again for fresh air, and was seen no more for a while.

But one should not be satisfied with the sight of the fashioning of a
bowl or goblet, however interesting the process may be; but entering the
gondola again should insist upon visiting both S. Pietro Martire and S.
Donato, even if the gondolier, as is most probable, will affirm that
both are closed.

The first named is on the left of the canal by which we enter Murano,
and which for a while is bordered by glass factories as close together
as doctors in Harley Street. The church architecturally is nothing; its
value is in its pictures, especially a Bellini and a Basaiti, and its
sacristan.

This sacristan has that simple keenness which is a rarit