There is material in this event for an affecting drama: a genial inventor, indefatigably occupied in realizing an idea, an usurious and crafty money-lender, abusing the financial carelessness of a genius, to get him more and more into his power; a clever servant courting the daughter of the usurer, and conspiring with him against the great master; the inventor robbed of all the fruit of his exertions during many years, at the moment that it was ripe to be gathered. _Van der Linde._ * * * * * Gutenberg’s last act upon record in Strasburg was the selling out of the last remnant of his inheritance. The first evidence we have of his return to Mentz is an entry, on the sixth day of October, 1448, in a record of legal contracts, in which he appears as a borrower of money. It seems that Gutenberg had persuaded his kinsman, Arnold Gelthus, to borrow from Rynhard Brömser and John Rodenstein, the sum of 150 guilders, for the use of which Gutenberg promised to pay the yearly interest of 8-1/2 guilders. Gutenberg had no securities to offer; Gelthus had to pledge the rents of some houses for this purpose. How this money was to be used is not stated, but it may be presumed that Gutenberg needed it for the development of his grand invention. His plans, [p404] whatever they were, met with the approbation of his uncle John Gensfleisch, by whose permission he occupied the leased house[248] _Zum Jungen_, which he used not only for a dwelling, but as a printing office. At this time Gutenberg was, no doubt, nearly perfect in his knowledge of the correct theory of type-founding, and had also acquired fair practice as a printer. Helbig thinks that he had ready the types of the _Bible of 36 lines_. Madden says that he was then, or very soon after, engaged in printing a small edition of this book. There is evidence that these types were in use at least as early as 1451. Two leaves of an early typographic edition of the _Donatus_, 27 lines to the page, printed on vellum from the types of the _Bible of 36 lines_, have been discovered near Mentz, in the original binding of an old account book of 1451.[249] In one word the letter i is reversed, a positive proof that it was printed from types, and not from blocks. The ink is still very black, but Fischer says that it will not resist water.[250] As this fragment shows the large types of the _Bible of 36 lines_ in their most primitive form, it authorizes the belief that it should have been printed by Gutenberg soon after his return to Mentz.