You know how we look upon foreigners who steal their knowledge of our art." "I wish to make sure that he has really stolen something of it." The foreman laughed outright.
"You will be convinced soon enough!" he said.

"Give your place to the foreigner, Piero," he added, speaking to the man who had refused to move at Giovanni's bidding.
Piero at once chilled the fresh lump of glass he had begun to fashion and smashed it off the tube into the refuse jar.

Without a word Zorzi took his place.

While he warmed the end of his blow-pipe at the 'bocca' he looked to right and left to see where the working-stool and marver were placed, and to be sure that the few tools he needed were at hand, the pontil, the 'procello,'-- that is, the small elastic tongs for modelling--and the shears.

Piero's apprentice had retired to a distance, as he had received no special orders, and the workmen hoped that Zorzi would find himself in difficulty at the moment when he would turn in the expectation of finding the assistant at his elbow.