A mundane society, however, where fine gentlemen and ladies meet to admire and be admired, needs other outlets for its imagination than that of the primrose way to Paradise. The labour of the fields had inspired Olivier de Serres with the prose Georgics of his _Theatre d'Agriculture_, a work directed towards utility; the romance of the fields, and the pastoral, yet courtly, loves of a French Arcady, were the inspiration of the endless prose bucolics found in the _Astree_ of HONORE D'URFE. The Renaissance delight in the pastoral had passed from Italy to Spain; through the _Diana_ of the Spanish Montemayor it passed to France. After a period of turbulent strife there was a fascination in visions of a peace, into which, if warfare entered, the strange irruption only enhanced an habitual calm. A whole generation waited long to learn the issue of the passion of Celadon and Astree. The romance, of which the earliest part appeared in 1610, or earlier, was not completely published until 1627, when its author was no longer living.[1] The scene is laid in the fields of d'Urfe's familiar Forez and on the banks of the Lignon; the time is of Merovingian antiquity. The shepherd Celadon, banished on suspicion of faithlessness from the presence of his beloved Astree, seeks death beneath the stream; he is saved by the nymphs, escapes the amorous pursuit of Galatea, assumes a feminine garb, and, protected by the Druid Adamas, has the felicity of daily beholding his shepherdess. At length he declares himself, and is overwhelmed with reproaches; true lover that he is, when he offers his body to the devouring lions of the Fountain of Love, the beasts refuse their prey; the venerable Druid discreetly guides events; Celadon's fidelity receives its reward in marriage, and the banks of the Lignon become a scene of universal joy. The colours of the _Astree_ are faded now as those of some ancient tapestry, but during many years its success was prodigious. D'Urfe's highest honour, of many, is the confession of La Fontaine:-- "_Etant petit garcon je lisais son roman, Et je le lis encore ayant la barbe grise._" The _Astree_ won its popularity, in part because it united the old attraction of a chivalric or heroic strain with that of the newer pastoral; in part because it idealised the gallantries and developed the amorous casuistry of the day, not without a real sense of the power of love; in part because it was supposed to exhibit ideal portraits of distinguished contemporaries. It was the parent of a numerous progeny; and as the heroic romance of the seventeenth century is derived in direct succession from the loves of Celadon and Astree, so the comic romance, beside all that it owes to the tradition of the _esprit gaulois_, owes something to the mocking gaiety with which d'Urfe exhibits the adventures and emotional vicissitudes of his inconstant shepherd Hylas. [Footnote 1: It should be noted that the close of the _Astree_ is by D'Urfe's secretary Baro.]