been decided that the accomplishment of their secret [the duration of copartnership] should occupy five entire years: in the event of the death of any one of the four partners, during this five years, _all the implements pertaining to the secret_, and all the merchandise that had been manufactured, should be vested in the remaining partners, and that the heirs of the partner who had died should receive, at the end of five years, 100 guilders. Consequently, and because the contract, which is expressed in these very terms, and which contract was found at the house of Andrew Dritzehen, fully set forth all these stipulations, and those that preceded it, as he John Gutenberg hopes to prove by good witnesses, he demands that George Dritzehen and his brother Claus should deduct the 85 guilders which were still due to him from their late brother, from the 100 guilders, and then he would consent to return to them the 15 guilders, although he was still fairly entitled, according to the terms of the contract, to several years, before this money should be payable. As to the declaration made by George Dritzehen that the late Andrew Dritzehen, his brother, had taken much money by the pledge of his goods and of his inheritance from his father, he did not think it worth consideration, for he [Gutenberg] had not received from the goods or inheritance anything more than he had before first stated, except a half-omen of wine, a basket of pears, and a half-fuder of wine, which Andrew Dritzehen and Andrew Heilmann had given to him; that, moreover, the two men had consumed the equivalent of this and more besides at his house, for which they had never been asked to pay anything. Moreover, when he, George Dritzehen, demanded to be admitted in the partnership as an heir, he knew very well that this claim was no better founded than any other; [p383] and that Andrew Dritzehen had never been security for him, neither for lead, nor for any other matter, except on one occasion before Fritz von Seckingen; but he had, after his death, satisfied this obligation; and it is for the purpose of establishing the truth of these assertions that he demands that the depositions should be heard. The depositions contain the most curious portions of the pleadings, for it will be noticed that Gutenberg and Dritzehen have not described the secret. Gutenberg did not wish to divulge it, and Dritzehen probably hoped to discover it in the evidence, which begins mysteriously and dramatically.