Freiherr von Aretin counted on the sole use of the franchise, which he had believed to be unassailable when he formed our company and advanced the necessary money; but when in time he complained because the Royal Government as well as private persons established printeries, he received the reply that the art had long ceased to be a secret,--as if a condition of the franchise had been that a useful process must be kept secret. In that case I could not have employed any man either for drawing or printing, as that would have involved the loss of secrecy and thus the loss of the franchise. My connection with Freiherr von Aretin lasted four years. During this time I turned out a great amount of government work, such as circulars, statistical tables, charts, etc., besides many specimens in various forms of art. At that time the idea was first conceived for the present text-book of lithography, and, indeed, we published the first installment of the sample plates. Still, our enterprise was far less successful than Freiherr von Aretin and I had hoped. It was very difficult to obtain skillful workmen, especially writers and artists. Even Strixner and Pilotti, whom we had engaged and who worked at producing facsimiles of the Royal Manual Drawing Cabinet, were very slow to gain the necessary perfection and speed. And again we lacked the manager, namely, a man who understood business and knew what to produce and how to sell it. I myself was heavily burdened, as I had not only to exercise continual supervision of the five presses, but also was practically the only one who could prepare the plates for those presses. Added to this was the fact that the printers were almost all uneducated men, some of whom could not even read, and they spoiled many plates that I had to reproduce. This caused so much loss of time that already was insufficient, that it is no wonder that several presses came to a standstill frequently. Luckily there were government jobs at times that demanded fifteen thousand and more impressions. This enabled me to prepare new material while the presses were busy. On the whole, however, this work had the disadvantage of demanding such speed that usually all the five presses had to work at it, so that, when it was done, they were all at a standstill together, sometimes for weeks; and then the wages, etc., consumed the previous profit, so that in the end little or nothing was left. Thus it was natural that Herr von Aretin, who was being annoyed at this time by other affairs, began to lose his enthusiasm for lithography. Therefore, when he had to go to Neuburg as Governmental-Director, and could not participate personally any more, and when, at the same time, Herr Gleissner and I obtained situations with the Royal Tax Service, he sold the establishment to Herr von Manlich, the Director of the Royal Gallery, and to Herr Zeller, a merchant.