The fancy for these collections of tales spread widely in the sixteenth century, and a respectable number of them have found a home in histories of literature. Sometimes they present themselves honestly as what they are, and sometimes under a variety of disguises, the most extravagant of which is the title of the rather famous work of Henri Estienne, _Apologie pour Herodote_. Others, more or less fantastic, are the _Propos Rustiques_ and _Baliverneries_ of Noel Du Fail, a Breton squire (as we should say), and his later _Contes d'Eutrapel_; the _Escraignes Dijonnaises_ and other books of Tabourot des Accords; the _Matinees_ and _Apres Dinees_ of Cholieres, and, the largest collection of all, the _Serees_ [Soirees] of the Angevin Guillaume Bouchet,[117] while after the close of the actual century, but probably representing earlier work, appeared the above-mentioned _Moyen de Parvenir_, by turns attributed and denied to Beroalde de Verville. In all these, without exception, the imitation of Rabelais, in different but unmistakable ways, is to be found; and in not a few, that of the _Heptameron_ and of Desperiers; while not unfrequently the same tales are found in more than one collection. The _fatrasie_ character--that is to say, the stuffing together of all sorts of incongruous matter in more or less burlesque style--is common to all of them; the licence of subject and language to most; and there are hardly any, except a few mere modernisings of old _fabliaux_, in which you will not find the famous farrago of the Renaissance--learning, religious partisanship, war, law, love, almost everything. All the writers are far below their great master,[118] and none of them has the appeal of the _Heptameron_. But the spirit of tale-telling pervades the whole shelf-ful, and there is one more special point of importance "for us." [Sidenote: The "provincial" character of these.]