[521] [Lettre à or sur double queue, letters on which the seal is suspended from a strip of parchment passed through the document.]
[522] See what I have to say in the Preface on the subject of Pierre le Rouge, who is given the title of king's printer once, in 1488.
[523] The dates that I give are those of the holding of the office of king's printer, and not of the carrying on the trade of printer, which, as a general rule, do not coincide, at least so far as the earlier dates are concerned.
[524] Brunet, Manuel de Libraire, 5th edit., vol. ii, col. 1672.—See infra, p. 307 King's Printers for the Mathematics.
[525] He calls himself 'architypographus regius' in a work printed by him in 1608.
[526] See the Recette générale des finances of Paris for 1671, in the national archives, KK. 356, fol. 53.
[527] See my Les Estienne, p. 35.
[528] Renouard, Annales des Estienne, 3d edit., p. 228, col. 1. See also my Les Estienne, p. 36.
[529] This appointment involved him in some difficulty with his colleagues, as may be seen from the following letter, of which I found a copy in the Bibliothèque du Louvre, in the Nyon collection.
'When I asked and obtained the office of king's printer, of which M. Le Breton had been deprived by death, I had no idea that it could cause any heart-burning on the part of my confrères, with whom I have always earnestly desired to be on the best of terms. If I had been able to foresee such a thing, I am too much a friend of peace to have voluntarily exposed myself to it by assuming a title which was subject to dispute. But, monsieur, when I submitted the question to you, I thought that I could see that it did not seem to you free from doubt. For this reason I cannot hesitate to abandon claims which seem to me well-founded.