The first remarkable collection was the famous _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_, traditionally attributed to Louis XI. when Dauphin and an exile in Brabant, with the assistance of friends and courtiers, but more recently selected by critics that way minded as part of the baggage they have "commandeered" for Antoine de la Salle. The question of authorship is of scarcely the slightest importance to us; though the point last mentioned is worth mentioning, because we shall have to notice the favoured candidate in this history again. There are certainly some of the hundred that he might have written. In the careless way in which literary history used to be dealt with, the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ were held to be mere imitation of the _Decameron_ and other Italian things. It is, of course, much more than probable that the Italian _novella_ had not a little to do with the precipitation of the French _nouvelle_ from its state of solution in the _fabliau_. But the person or persons who, in imitating the _Decameron_, produced the _Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles_ had a great deal more to do--and did a great deal less--than this mere imitation of their original. As for a group of included tales, the already-mentioned _Seven Wise Masters_[80] was known in France much before Boccaccio's time. The title was indeed admittedly Italian, but such an obvious one as to require no positive borrowing, and there is in the French book no story-framework like that of the plague and the country-house visit; no cheerful personalities like Fiammetta or Dioneo make not merely the intervals but the stories themselves alive with a special interest. Above all, there is nothing like the extraordinary mixture of unity and variety--a pure gift of genius--which succeeds in making the _Decameron_ a real book as well as a bundle of narratives. Nor is there anything like the literary brilliancy of the actual style and handling.