Fust's great
discovery the fruit of his alliance with the powers of Evil, Mr.
Browning represents it as an act of atonement for the figurative
devil-worship which was involved in a disorderly and ostentatious life.
Fust has by his own admission sinned to this extent.[139] He has obeyed
the father of lies. He has also accepted with thankfulness the chance of
redeeming his soul by a signal service rendered to the cause of Truth.
The process of engraving on gold, furtively witnessed in a Tuscan
workshop, has suggested to him the manufacture of metallic types, and he
has been for years secluded with the conception of his printing-press,
and glowing visions of that winged word which should one day fly forth
at his command. Complacent ignorance and stupidity have buzzed freely
about him as he sat unaided and alone in what Mr. Browning poetically
depicts as the prolonged travail of a portentous mental birth; and, as
we are led to imagine, much well-meant remonstrance and advice rebounded
from his closed door. But at the moment in question the door is open,
for the work of Fust is complete. Seven "Friends" present themselves
prepared to lecture him for his good and for that of their city
(Mayence) which is endangered by his compact with the Devil; and the
ensuing intensely humorous colloquy supplies him with the fitting
occasion for distributing specimens of his new art and displaying the
mechanism through which its apparent magic is achieved. He then pours
forth his soul in an impassioned utterance, half soliloquy, half prayer,
in which gratitude for his own redemption tempers the sense of triumph
in the world-wide intellectual deliverance he has been privileged to
effect, and becomes a tribute of adoration to that Absolute of Creative
Knowledge, the law of which he has obeyed; which stirs in the
unconsciousness of the ore and plant, and impels man to Its realization
step by step in the ever-receding, ever-present vision of his own
ignorance.

He owns, however, when the talk is resumed, that his happiness is not
free from cloud: since the wings which he has given to truth will also
aid the diffusion of falsehood; and the note of humour returns to the
situation when this contingency asserts itself in the mind of some of
the "friends." These worthies have passed through the descending scale
of feeling proper to such persons on such an occasion. They have
received Fust's invention as diabolical--as wonderful--as very simple
afte