Tory subsequently offered, in his 'Champ fleury,' a very confused explanation of his Pot Cassé, doing his utmost to connect it with the ordinary events of life; but everything tends to prove that it owes its origin to the death of Agnes. This shattered antique vessel represents Tory's daughter, whose career was shattered by destiny at the age of ten. The book secured by padlocks suggests Agnes's literary studies; the little winged figure among the clouds is her soul flying up to heaven. The device 'non plus' suggests the desperate grief of Tory, who seems to say: 'I no longer [non plus] care for anything'; or, more laconically: 'There is nothing more for me'; after the example of Valentine of Milan when he found himself in a similar situation.[52]
Luckily, time, which deadens all sorrows, even those which seem likely to endure for ever, assuaged Tory's grief. Before his funeral poem saw the light, he had returned to his beloved studies, and they had restored tranquillity to his mind. This is proved by the following passage from his 'Champ fleury,' in which he tells us how, on January 6, 1523 (or 1524, according to our method of computing time), that is to say, eighteen months after he lost his daughter, the idea of that curious book came to his mind. We are glad to recognize once more therein the patriotic Berrichon who had taken for his device the word 'civis.'
'In the morning of the day of the feast of Kings,'[53] he says, '... which was reckoned M. D. XXIII, the fancy came to me to muse in my bed, and to move the wheel of my memory, thinking on a thousand petty conceits, both serious and merry, whereamong I bethought me of a letter of ancient form, which I not long since made for the house of my lord the treasurer of the wars, Maistre Jehan Groslier, counsellor and secretary to the king our sire, lover of goodly letters and of all learned persons, of whom also he is greatly beloved and esteemed, as well on this side as the other of the mountains. And while thinking of that said antique letter there came of a sudden to my memory a pithy sentence of the first book and eighth chapter of Cicero's "Offices," where it is written: "Non nobis solum nati sumus, ortusque nostri partem patria vendicat, partem amici."[54] Which is to say, in substance, that we are not born into this world for ourselves alone, but to do service and pleasure to our friends and our country.'[55]
Such was the origin of 'Champ fleury.' Here follows the composition of that work, as the author himself gives it to us, in the form of a table of contents, at the beginning:[56]—
'This whole work is divided into three books.
'In the first book is contained the exhortation to establish and ordain the French language by fixed rule, and to speak elegantly, in good and soundest French.
'In the second is treated the invention of antique letters, and the proportionate coincidence thereof with the natural body and face of the perfect man. With several happy inventions and reflections upon the said antique letters.
'In the third and last book all the said antique letters, in their alphabetical order, are drawn and proportioned in height and width according to their proper formation and required articulation, both Latin and French, as well in the ancient as in the modern fashion.