will get the channels ready; you will easily be able to drive back the two plugs with this pair of iron crooks; and I am sure that my mould will fill miraculously. I feel more ill than I ever did in all my life, and verily believe that it will kill me before a few hours are over."[1] Thus, with despair at heart, I left them, and betook myself to bed.
LXXVI
No sooner had I got to bed, than I ordered my serving-maids to carry food and wine for all the men into the workshop; at the same time I cried: "I shall not be alive to-morrow." They tried to encourage me, arguing that my illness would pass over, since it came from excessive fatigue. In this way I spent two hours battling with the fever, which steadily increased, and calling out continually: "I feel that I am dying." My housekeeper, who was named Mona Fiore da Castel del Rio, a very notable manager and no less warm-hearted, kept chiding me for my discouragement; but,on the other hand, she paid me every kind attention which was possible. However, the sight of my physical pain and moral dejection so affected her, that,
[ 262 ]
- ↑ Some technical terms require explanation in this sentence. The canali or channels were sluices for carrying the molten metal from the furnace into the mould. The mandriani, which I have translated by iron crooks, were poles fitted at the end with curved irons, by which the openings of the furnace, plugs, or in Italian spine, could be partially or wholly driven back, so as to let the molten metal flow through the channels into the mould. When the metal reached the mould, it entered in a red-hot stream between the tonaca, or outside mould, and the anima, or inner block, filling up exactly the space which had previously been occupied by the wax extracted by a method of slow burning alluded to above. I believe that the process is known as casting à cire perdue. The forma, or mould, consisted of two pieces; one hollow (la tonaca), which gave shape to the bronze; one solid and rounded (la anima), which stood at a short interval within the former, and regulated the influx of the metal. See above, p. 228, note.
