At Vicenza initials were also mostly in the Venetian style, but inferior as a rule to the originals. In one volume, a _Catalogus Sanctorum_, printed by Henricus de Sancto Urso in 1493, there are two typographical eccentricities which, as they have to do with initials, are worth pointing out. In some early volumes ornamental initials are occasionally met with of such primitive execution, that the only possible explanation is, that the necessary letter being wanting, it was cut on the spur of the moment by an entirely unskilled hand. Amongst the initials which occur the least often at the beginning of Latin paragraphs are the B and G, and of course such letters as X, Y, Z. It is probable that when this _Catalogus_ was being set up, there was no G amongst the ornamental alphabets available, for no other paragraph in the book begins with this letter. To meet this contingency, the required initial was cut forthwith, the result being the G in question, roughly representing a human face. The other singularity is an instance of the transposition of letters, of which examples have been already given, but here, instead of turning an A or a C upside down to serve as a V or a D, it is an F that does duty both for an F and an E. At the beginning of the eighth book there is an E for St. Ezekiel, which has evidently been made from an F, the lower transversal part having been cut afterwards, as can be seen by the rough execution and the disturbance of the general ornamentation. But the transposition of an F into an E is a thing that often occurs. The peculiarity here is that at the tenth book, which begins with the feast of All Saints, _Festivitas omnium Sanctorum_, an F being required, the same block is used as for Ezekiel, the letter being restored to its first condition by a plug, but showing clearly traces of its transformations. CHAPTER X LYONS