events, it was from Basle that Ulrich Gering, Michael Freyburger, and Martin Krantz, printers recommended to the two Sorbonnists, departed, and in due course arrived in Paris. Of these three men, who were the first to establish a printing office on the French side of the Rhine, Ulrich Gering was a student as well as a printer, so was Freyburger, originally of Colmar. Krantz was a letter-founder, and the only real workman of the three companions. We have often regretted with regard to these men, as also to Gutenberg, Fust, and Schoeffer, that no really authentic portrait has transmitted their features to us. Every one will recall the fur cap and loose pantaloons of the mediocre statue at Mayence, but there is really no portrait of Gutenberg. As to Gering, M. Philippe, in his _Histoire de l'Origine de l'Imprimerie à Paris_, publishes a grotesque figure muffled in the ruff of the sixteenth century, after a picture preserved at Lucerne, but for which much cannot be said. Lacaille, in his _Histoire de l'Imprimerie_, gives a full-length portrait of Gering, said to be taken from a painting in the College Montagu. The workshop of the three Germans was set up within the walls of the Sorbonne--_in ædibus Sorbonnicis_--in 1469. There they set to work at once, their printing establishment consisting simply of a room, none too light, a table, a press, and formes. Krantz doubtless struck the types chosen by the Sorbonnists, for there were then in use two sorts of letters: German Gothic and Roman. They kept to the Roman, as being more round and clear; and as soon as they obtained matrices and cast their type, they entered on their task with ardour. [Illustration: Fig. 10.--"Letters" of Gasparin of Bergamo. First page of the first book printed at Paris, in 1470.] The tendencies of Fichet and Heinlein were not towards transcendent theology, but rather towards the literature of the ancients and contemporary rhetorical works. Besides, it may be said, considering that men are far from perfect, Fichet counted on making the authorised presses serve his own purpose. We find him publishing a treatise on rhetoric in quarto in 1471; meantime he supervised the work confided to his artists. They commenced with a large volume of "Letters" of Gasparin of Bergamo, which was set up in quarto with the Roman type, the form of which had been accepted. At the end of the work, the impression of which cost much time--possibly a year--the three printers placed a quatrain in Latin distichs, which is at once a statement of identity and a promise for the future. [Illustration: Fig. 11.--Colophon in distichs in the "Letters" of Gasparin of Bergamo, first book printed at Paris, at the office of the Sorbonne.]