The _Bible of 1462_ found few purchasers in Mentz. The demand in the city had already been supplied with the _Bibles of 36 lines_ and of _42 lines_, and buyers from abroad shunned a city subject to siege and to civil war. Leaving Schœffer to take care of the business of the printing office, Fust took the unsold _Bibles_ to Paris, where he believed they would find a more generous appreciation. For it seems that, in 1458, the king of France had sent Nicholas Jenson to Mentz to get a knowledge of the practice of typography, the fame of which had then reached France, and it is supposed that Jenson gave to Fust the information that there was a demand for printing in Paris. This is the official record of the proposed mission.[310] On the third day of October, 1458, the king [Charles VII], having learned that Messire Guthemburg, chevalier, a resident of Mentz in Germany, a man dexterous in engraving and in types and punches, had perfected the invention of printing with types and punches, curious concerning this mystery, the king ordered the chiefs of the mint to nominate some persons of proper experience in engraving of a similar nature, so that he could secretly send them to the said place, to obtain information about the said form [type-mould] and invention, there to hear, to consider, and to learn the art. This mandate of the king was obeyed, and it was directed that Nicholas Jenson should make the journey, by means of which the knowledge of the art and its establishment should be achieved in this realm, and it should be his (Jenson’s) duty to first give the art of printing to the said realm.[311] [p466] The description of printing here given is singularly exact. It is not surprising that the existence of the new art was then known in Paris, for the colophon to the _Psalter of 1457_ had announced the masterly invention; but it is strange that this document specified its characteristic features—the _formen_, or the matrices and type-mould, the types, punches and engraving. We see that the secret was revealed; that Frenchmen in 1458 had a correct idea of the vital principle of printing, and that all they required was a knowledge of its manipulations. Eager to prevent the threatened rivalry of Jenson, Fust appeared in Paris, in 1462, with copies of the _Bible_,[312] while Jenson was ineffectually soliciting the new king to aid him. So far from being persecuted in Paris, Fust was received with high consideration, not only by the king, but by the leading men of the city. He was encouraged to establish in Paris a store for the sale of his books, and to repeat his visit.