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 form of the softened material, smoothed it with the battledoor, gauged it with the compasses, coaxed it with the sugar-tongs, and finally trimmed it around the top with his scissors as easily as if it had been of paper. It was then cracked off from the pontil and carried away, a finished liqueur-glass of the tiniest size, to be annealed. After this it might be used in its simple condition, or ornamented with engraving, while the bottom of the foot, still rough from contact with the pontil, was to be ground, smoothed, and then polished.
"Oh, how lovely! Look, Miselle, at this ruby glass," cried out Optima.
"Gorgeous!" assented Miselle, peeping into a small pot where glowed and heaved what seemed in very truth a mass of molten rubies.
"What are you going to make of this beautiful glass?" inquired she, enthusiastically, of a pleasant-looking man who was patiently waiting for room to approach his work.
"Lamp-globes, Ma'am," returned he, sententiously.
"Poor Miselle! You thought it would be Cinderella's slipper, at least, didn't you?" laughed Optima. "But look!"
The man, dipping his pipe, not into the ruby glass, but into an adjoining pot of fine flint-glass, carefully blew a small globe, and then removing the tube from his mouth swung it about in the air for a few moments, until it had gained a certain degree of firmness. Then dipping the bubble into the precious pot of ruby glass, (whose color, as Cicerone mysteriously whispered, was derived from an oxide of gold,) he withdrew it coated with the brilliant color, and so softened by the heat as to be capable of further distension. After gently blowing, until the shade had reached its proper size, the workman handed it to another, who, rolling it upon the iron arms of his bench, made an opening, at the point diametrically opposite that attached to the blow-pipe, with the end of the compasses, and carefully enlarged, gauged, and shaped it, by means of plyers and battledoor.
"Pretty soon you will see how they cut the figures out and show the white glass underneath," said the guide; but Miselle's attention was at this moment engrossed by a series of small explosions, apparently close at hand, and disagreeably suggestive of the final ascension of the Glass Works, inclusive of all the pale men and boys, who might certainly be supposed purified by fire, and ready to be released from the furnace of affliction. Not feeling herself worthy to join this sublimated throng, Miselle hastily communicated the idea to Optima, and proposed a sudden retreat, but was smilingly bidden to first consider for a moment the operations of four workmen close at hand, two of whom, kneeling upon the ground, grasped the handles of two little presses, very like aggravated bullet-moulds, while the other two, bringing little masses of glass upon the ends of their blow-sticks and dropping them carefully into the necks of the moulds, proceeded to blow through the pipe until the air forced out a quantity of the glass in the form of a great bubble at the top of the mould. The pressure from within increasing still more, this bubble necessarily burst with a smart snap, and thus caused the explosive sounds above referred to. The two casters then scraped away the débris at the top with a bit of stick, and, opening their moulds, disclosed in one a pretty little essence-bottle, which a sharp boy in waiting immediately snapped up on the end of a long fork, where he had already spitted about a dozen more, and carried them away to the leer.
"But what are you casting?" asked Madame, puzzled, as the other workman opened his mould and poked its contents out upon a bit of board held ready by another sharp boy.