Much more complicated is the manufacture of the perle di luce, or beads of light, which so delight the natives of India and Africa. The name is taken from the way in which they are prepared, namely, by means of a jet of intense flame, and great skill and dexterity is required on the part of the workman, who can display his talent and originality by ornamenting them with flowers and arabesques. The combined effects of light and colour are often very beautiful, and seem a fit adornment for all those eastern and southern nations over whom a halo of fable and romance is cast.
In the interior of Africa, these perle di luce are frequently used as payment instead of coin, and the cunning Arab, in whose hands almost the whole of the trade lies, generally turns to his own profit the delight that the innocent negresses exhibit at his gay wares.
But contrary to what one might expect, the black, woolly-headed children of Nature show a strange distaste for glossy beads; so much so indeed, that the Venetians find it necessary to deaden the natural brilliancy which all glass obtains when it becomes cold, by grinding it, and thus softening the otherwise shining surface.
Notwithstanding all this, however, the bead industry of Venice is but a poorly-paid one; only the most skilful among the hands can manage to make a decent livelihood. Not very many of the women can earn more than about 4½d. a day, so that for them all the fast-days decreed by their Church are quite superfluous; their fasts last from Ash Wednesday to Ash Wednesday. Even polenta, that very frugal Italian national dish, is for them only a Sunday's treat; the rest of the week nature provides them with turnips and other roots, great piles of which, cooked on an open hearth, greet us in all the streets of Venice, where they are eagerly devoured by the hungry crowd. And yet these poor people work hard to give pleasure and delight to both great and little folk.
Truly they exemplify the old proverb, "Some must sow, that others may reap."
M. H.
[Answer to "Our Imaginary Dissolving Views"—VI. (See Vol. XIX., p. 351.) 1. Henrietta, Maria. 2. Vandyke's picture of Charles I. and his queen: the children were afterwards Charles II. and James II. 3. The Fronde. 4. Trial of Charles I. in Westminster Hall.]