Note 8 — IX

In his study of mediæval romances, M. Bergeret devotes himself to the Conte badin, or jesting tale of ludicrous adventure by which so much of Chaucer’s work was inspired. This school of short stories starts with the tales of Aristeides of Miletus, a writer of the second century B.C. His Milésiaques, as they are called, were followed by the fabliaux of the Middle Ages, and in the fifteenth century and onwards by the Cent Nouvelles nouvelles of Louis XI’s time, by the Heptaméron of the Queen of Navarre, the Decameron of Boccaccio and the Contes of Despériers, of Guillaume Bouchet, of Noël du Fail and others. La Fontaine retold many of the older tales in verse and Balzac tried to revive the Gallic wit and even the language of the fabliaux in his Contes drôlatiques.