Summer 1458, Jean de Ferrières needs to get hold of some money in order to confirm the tax breaks promised to the peasants on his estate. He accepts a proposal from a printing workshop (the very latest thing in Paris), to come and set up some printing presses in Crèvecœur to work on a copy of the Treatise on Hunting written by Henry de Ferrières, circa 1360. He holds this work very dearly and worries that they might ask him for the original manuscript, although it has already been copied out many times previously and updated over the past 100 years.

But the workshop is already being set up, the presses are being installed in people’s homes despite resistance from the peasants who see their personal space shrinking, especially since the printers and illuminators are bringing their families along. Offered this opportunity and the resulting benefits to his finances, Jean de Ferrières brings the work out of its coffer and unties the pages to hand them over to the copyists.