well-defined things. Models both Italian and French gave her the scheme
of including a large number of short and curtly, but not skimpingly,
told stories in one general framework, and of subdividing them into
groups dealing more or less with the same subject or class of subject.
She had also in her predecessors the example of drawing largely on that
perennial and somewhat facile source of laughter--the putting together
of incidents and phrases which even by those who laugh at them are
regarded as indecorous. But of this expedient she availed herself rather
less than any of her forerunners. She had further the example of a
generally satirical intent; but here, too, she was not content merely to
follow, and her satire is, for the most part, limited to the corruptions
and abuses of the monastic orders. It can hardly be said that any of the
other stock subjects, lawyers, doctors, citizens, even husbands (for she
is less satirical on marriage than encomiastic of love), are dealt with
much by her. She found also in some, but chiefly in older books of the
Chartier and still earlier traditions, and rather in Italian than in
French, a certain strain of romance proper and of adventure; but of
this also she availed herself but rarely. What she did not find in
any example (unless, and then but partially, in the example of her own
servant, Bonaventure Des-périers) was first the interweaving of a great
deal not merely of formal religious exercise, but of positive religious
devotion in her work; and secondly, the infusing into it of the peculiar
Renaissance contrast, so often to be noticed, of love and death, passion
and piety, voluptuous enjoyment and sombre anticipation.

But it is now time to say a little more about the personality and work
of this lady, whose name all this time we have been using freely, and
who was indeed a very notable person quite independently of her literary
work. Nor was she in literature by any means an unnotable one, quite
independently of the collection of unfinished stories, which, after