Page:The Library, volume 5, series 3.djvu/65

 AND ITS PRINTER. 53 had been too grave. It would be interesting to know what enormity she had been guilty of, or how she came to be a protegee of the House of Neuchatel, but this we are not told. Adam him- self was back in Basel in the same spring, and is subsequently mentioned at intervals as the creditor of Besicken the printer, a bookbinder named Pan- cracius, and others, for small sums. In June, 1485, he was fined, along with several others of his craft, for an assault on Heinrich Dietler, also a ' Karten- macher.' In the following January, he and his wife (who here first reappears), conjointly with another wood-cutter, Friedrich Hirsinger, and his wife Elsa, acknowledge a debt owing to Michael Meyger, a city councillor, of 200 Rhenish florins, ' harriirende von etlichem Bappir so Michel Wenssler in jrem Namen worden ist,' to be repaid by next Frankfort fair. Evidently, therefore, Adam did not confine himself to the manufacture of playing cards, but was also an agent for supplying the printing trade with paper, and, in view of the reference to the book-fair at Frankfort, perhaps a bookseller as well. It is thus the less surprising to find him, rather more than three years after this date, embarking on a considerable printing venture of his own, in the shape of the Chur Breviary already discussed. Neither Adam's resources nor his skill, however, were equal to dealing with this new undertaking single-handed. The costs of the printing alone, exclusive of binding and rubrication, amounted to not less than 700 guilders, and of these Adam borrowed 170 of Heinrich David and 160 of Ruprecht Winter, besides a possible further sum