The third leaf contains some details concerning the calendar, which begins on the fourth leaf and ends on the ninth. The border of the lower part of leaf Avij is turned upside down. The Hours begin on the tenth leaf.
The book is a quarto, but the sheets are folded two by two, after the style introduced by Pierre Schoiffer himself, which gives it the appearance of an octavo. The signatures run from A to T, which makes eighteen folds, or one hundred and forty-four leaves.
The engravings consist of sixteen complete borders, one of which is repeated on the recto and verso of each of the first sixteen leaves, embracing thirty-two pages of text, after which the same decorations reappear. They are composed of arabesques in which, from time to time, these words appear at the sides: SOLI DEO—LAVS—HONOR—GEOFROY—TORY—NON PLVS. At the foot of certain pages we see a crowned F (the first letter of the king's name), a crowned C (the first letter of the name of Queen Claude, daughter of Louis XII), and a crowned dolphin (daulphin), in allusion to the title of the king's eldest son. Queen Claude died before the book was finished, perhaps even before the printing was begun; but Tory did not choose to waste the woodcut of her, so it was preserved and was used for more than fifteen years, as we shall see. These three subjects are reproduced in Dibdin's 'Bibliographical Decameron' (vol. i, page 99); there are two others in the same work (vol. ii, page 65). At the foot of the other pages are arabesques, among which we find the Pot Cassé, no. 2. In the text there are thirteen large drawings, which harmonize admirably with the borders. All the illustrations, or almost all, borders and drawings alike, are signed with the Lorraine cross.
The book ends on the recto of a leaf on the verso of which is this colophon: EXCVDEBAT SIMON COLINÆVS PARISIIS E REGIONE SCHOLARVM DECRETORVM: ANNO A CHRISTI IESV NATIVITATE M. D. XXV. XVII. CAL. FEBR.
This date coincides with January 16, 1525. We have seen that the title-page bears the date 1524, that is to say, the year when the book was begun. These two dates, cited separately, have led bibliographers astray, and have given rise to a theory that there are two different editions of the same book.
