So the master and apprentice sat side by side, clinking their goblets, and drinking to the health and prosperity of the art of printing. Old Beildech was obliged also to take his share, for said Gutenberg, “He, too, deserves well of me, and of the great art of typography. Was it not he who saved my presses in the wicked quarrel which I had with Dritzehn, and his heirs, when they all tried to trample on me, and would have forced my secret from me for a bit of bread? Believe me, my son, I have endured much, and heaved many a sigh, ere I reached my present position. Ah! when the little Herr Gutenberg came into the world, they did not sing the song they ought to have sung around his cradle, that would have been that he would wander from town to town, with a pack upon his back, practising his poor trade.” At this forlorn picture, Claude could not help laughing. “Master,” said he to Gutenberg, “if the curiosity of a young man will not appear indiscreet, I should like to hear you relate how the first idea of your invention occurred to you?” At this question from the lad a grave and sad expression crossed the old man’s face; he laid his hand on his broad forehead, furrowed with wrinkles, and looking down into the depths of his goblet, he answered, “My friend, in this world whatever is best and noblest always comes alone, and of itself, without our being able to say from whence or how--so it was with the art which I pursue. The method of printing with boards as you do for cards, and as others do for books, ceased to satisfy me. The step from engraved boards to moveable types was comparatively easy. The ancients, with their wisdom, had already long since pointed out the way, but no attention had been paid to them. It was on looking one day at my signet ring, that I was led to think of using moveable types. I had amused myself with impressing on the soft wax the little pilgrim with his cockle-shells, which has always been the armorial bearing of the Gutenbergs of Maïence, and it was on seeing my coat-of-arms reproduced that it occurred to me one might cut letters in wood, or in stone, and afterwards print them. Claude, thou seest how far I still was from the goal, and yet even then light was breaking in upon me for the advancement of my own art, and of other branches connected with it. If thou knowest Strasburg, I lived at that time in the Faubourg St. Arbogaste; I will not tell thee the time and the trouble it took to achieve the manufacture of wooden blocks, how many attempts I made before I succeeded, and how many losses I sustained! One of the greatest difficulties, when I had formed my characters, was to print them. A press is apparently a very simple thing, without complication, and yet there is an abyss of separation between a press and the brush which was used in former days, that great pad of rag and of horse-hair, with which one could only print one side of a page at a time, and even that with great difficulty.