Some discoloration and small marks on book jacket Doubleday & Company, 1963, 348 pages Mathurin Busson, a proud master glass-blower, created a crystal goblet in honor of Louis XV, so perfect it defied all attempts at duplication. It came to symbolize the heritage he passed on to his five children: Robert, the eldest, a charming but hopelessly irresponsible opportunist; Pierre, a dreamer with no head for business; Michel, embittered by a speech impediment; Edmé, an idealist hampered by the body but not the restraint of a woman; and Sophie, from whose point of view their story is compassionately told. In a powerful evocation of the inhumanity of war, Miss du Maurier tells how the lives of the Bussons were violently and permanently altered by the French Revolution and the Civil War which followed it. In preparation for THE GLASS-BLOWERs, Miss du Maurier spent many months in France capturing the background and feeling of these master craftsmen whose special world she recreates in this superb historical novel.