The first French-language Marteau books appeared in the 1660s and were immediately identified as not actually being published by a man named Pierre Marteau residing in Cologne. The name would have been that of a Frenchman who had opened his shop outside France yet close to the French border. Cologne's geographical location smelled of political freedom — Marteau would avoid France's censorship by publishing outside France; Cologne promised access to the European market and the chance to get a good deal of the production smuggled back into France where it would sell on the black market for ten times the price.