The free city of Frankfort now offered itself as a mediator between the nobles and plebeians of Mainz, and procured their recall on condition of the governing magistracy being equally shared between the high classes and the burgesses. But Gutenberg, whether his valor in the civil war had rendered him more obnoxious and more hostile to the burgesses; whether his pride, fostered by the traditions of his race, could not submit patiently to an equality with plebeians; or whether, more probably, ten years of exile and study at Strasburg had already turned the bent of his thoughts to a nobler subject than the vain honors of a free city, refused to return to his country. His mother, who watched over her son's interest at Mainz, petitioned the republic to allow him to receive as a pension a small portion of the revenues of his confiscated possessions. The republic replied that the young patrician's refusal to return to his country was a declaration of war, and that the republic did not pay its enemies. Gutenberg, persisting in his voluntary exile and in his disdain, lived on the secret remittances of his mother. But at Strasburg he already enjoyed so great a popularity for his disposition and his acquirements, that one day, when the chief magistrate of Mainz was passing the territory of Strasburg, he was arrested by the friends of Gutenberg, shut up in a castle, and did not recover his liberty until the city of Mainz had signed a treaty which restored the exile his patrimony. Thus this youth, the great tribune of the human mind, whose invention was destined to destroy forever the prejudices of race, and to restore, in after-times, liberty and civil equality to all the plebeians of the world, began his life, as yet unrecognized, at the head of the patrician party of his country, in these struggles between the privileged castes and the people. Fortune seemed to delight in the contrast. But Gutenberg's wisdom, increasing with his age, was afterward destined to reunite the people and nobility, who looked on each other as enemies.