He again, that he might turn the admiration of the beholders into
astonishment, and work himself the more into the Emperor's favour,
pray'd the glass out of the Emperor's hand; and having received it,
threw it with such a force against the paved floor, that the most
solid and firmest metal could not but have received some hurt thereby.
C?¦sar also was no less amazed at it, than concerned for it; but the
other took up the pot from the ground, not broken but bulg'd a little;
as if the substance of metal had put on the likeness of a glass; and
therewith taking a hammer out of his pocket, he hammer'd it as it had
been a brass kettle, and beat out the bruise: And now the fellow
thought himself in Heaven, in having, as he fansied, gotten the
acquaintance of C?¦sar, and the admiration of all: But it fell out
quite contrary: C?¦sar asking him if any one knew how to make this
malleable glass but himself? And he answering, there was not, the
Emperor commanded his head to be struck off: 'For,' said he, 'if this
art were once known, gold and silver will be of no more esteem than
dirt.'
"And for silver, I more than ordinarily affect it: I have several
water-pots more or less, whereon is the story how Cassandra killed her
son's, and the dead boys are so well embossed, you'd think them real.
I have also a drinking cup left me by an advocate of mine, where
D?¦dalus puts Niobe into the Trojan horse, as also that other of
Hermerotes; that they may stand as a testimony, there's truth in cups,
and all this massy; ror will I part with what I understand of them at
any rate.
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