I even suffered the insult of having the papers declare that though I had invented the art roughly, I had kept it secret for a long time through selfishness, and had never understood how to use it for anything except merely printing music. The falsity and humiliating character of this statement were bound to pain me the more bitterly, since all other stone-artists and stone-printers had learned only from me, and not one (not even Herr Mitterer, the most expert and, perhaps because of that, the most modest) possessed the art as a whole, in all its parts, as perfectly as I did. I hope that my text-book will prove this. So far as the secret was concerned, the statement was an evident falsehood. Since the moment when I received the exclusive franchise in Bavaria, in the year 1799, I had made no secret of any part of my process toward any living being. I showed the whole manipulation to my workmen as well as to all strangers. Those who knew me more intimately and realized, therefore, that I could not resist the desire for communicating anything that I discovered to benefit mankind, often censured me severely for my frankness, saying that I could have been a millionaire had I kept my art a secret. But this was equally erroneous. I never could have succeeded to any degree with my own means. The false belief that I desired exclusive enjoyment of the results of stone-printing, is in direct contradiction of the fact that the lack of secrecy was held to invalidate my exclusive franchise. The idea may have arisen, at least partly, through the circumstance that several of my former workmen, or others who learned something of the art, made a wonderful secret of it, in order to be considered more important. This was carried to such an extent that some traveled from place to place and sold their knowledge to many people for large sums under the seal of confidence. I pity those who thus received in exchange for their money something of little or no use, when they could have learned from me for practically nothing, as it always was my greatest delight to converse with intelligent men about those subjects that interested me so deeply as inventor. After making this little excursion, which was needed for my justification, I return to my story.