_Heptameron_, and in the verse not only of all the Pléiade poets in
France, but of Spenser, Donne, and some of their followers in England.
The scale of the stories, which are sometimes mere anecdotes, is so
small, the room for miscellaneous discourse in them is so scanty, and
the absence of any connecting links, such as those of Margaret's own
plan, checks the expression of personal feeling so much, that it is
only occasionally that this cast of thought can be perceived. But it
is there, and its presence is an important element in determining the
question of the exact authorship of the _Heptameron_ itself.

It can hardly be said that, except translations from the Italian (of
which the close intercourse between France and Italy in the days of the
later Valois produced many), Margaret had many other examples before
her. For such a book as the _Propos Rustiques_ of Noël du Fail,
though published before her death, is not likely to have exercised any
influence over her; and most other books of the kind are later than
her own. One such (for, despite its _bizarre_ title and its distinct
intention of attacking the Roman Church, Henry Estienne's _Apologie
pour Hérodote_ is really a collection of stories) deserves mention, not
because of its influence upon the Queen of Navarre, but because of the
Queen of Navarre's influence upon it. Estienne is constantly quoting the
_Heptameron_, and though to a certain extent the inveteracy with
which the friars are attacked here must have given the book a special
attraction for him, two things may be gathered from his quotations and
attributions. The first is that the book was a very popular one; the
second, that there was no doubt among well-informed persons, of whom and
in whose company Estienne most certainly was, that the _Heptameron_ was
in more than name the work of its supposed author.

From what went before it Margaret could, and could not, borrow certain