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In the Lai de Franchise, Eustache Deschamps, a poet who lived during the reign of the early Valois, repudiates the poetic presuppositions governing a courtly existence at a loss for standards. Courtly inspiration linked to an ideal and political denunciation are merged in a poetic background. The lyrical subject “I”, heir to a tradition, the memory of which it celebrates, is the intradiegetic eyewitness of clerical disintegration and journeys toward the generating framework of a new type of governance. This is revealed to him a contrario through mirrors, a droplet of dew and a flower, the reflections of which are powerless tools for reform. By means of satire, he departs from the courtly and, by so doing, clerical arena to re-discover an art of living and writing that corresponds to the elementary dimension commended by his entire body of work.