The French prose fiction of the middle ages resolves itself into several classes: the early Arthurian Romances already noticed; the scattered tales of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, which are chiefly to be studied in two excellent volumes of the _Bibliotheque Elzevirienne_[144]; the versions of such collections of legends, chiefly oriental in origin, as the _History of the Seven Wise Men_ and the _Gesta Romanorum_; the longer classical romances in prose; the late prose _remaniements_ of the great verse epics and romances of the twelfth century; and the more or less original work of the fifteenth century, when prose was becoming an independent and coequal literary exponent. The first class requires no further mention; of the third, the editions of the _Roman des Sept Sages_, by M. Gaston Paris[145], and of the _Violier des Histoires Romaines_, by M. Gustave Brunet[146], may be referred to as sufficient instances; of the fourth a very interesting specimen has been made accessible by the publication of the prose _Roman de Jules Cesar_ of Jean de Tuim[147], a free version from Lucan made apparently in the course of the thirteenth century, and afterwards imitated by the author of the verse romance; the fifth, though very numerous, are not of much value, though the great romance of _Perceforest_ and a few others may be excepted from this general condemnation. The second and the last deserve a longer mention. The tales of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, as published by MM. Moland and Hericault, are eight in number. Those of the second volume are on the whole inferior in interest to those of the first. They consist of _Asseneth_, a graceful legend of the marriage of Joseph with the daughter of the Egyptian high-priest; _Troilus_, interesting chiefly as a prose version of Benoist de Ste. More's legend of _Troilus and Cressida_, through the channel of Guido Colonna and Boccaccio; and a very curious English story, that of the rebel Fulk Fitzwarine. The thirteenth-century tales consist of _L'Empereur Constant_, the story with which Mr. Morris has made English readers familiar under the title of the 'Man born to be King;' of a prose version of the ubiquitous legend of _Amis et Amiles_; of _Le roi Flore et la belle Jehanne_, a kind of version of _Griselda_, though the particular trial and exhibition of fidelity is quite different; of the _Comtesse de Ponthieu_, the least interesting of all; and lastly, of the finest prose tale of the French middle ages, _Aucassin et Nicolette_. In this exquisite story Aucassin, the son of the count of Beaucaire, falls in love with Nicolette, a captive damsel. It is very short, and is written in mingled verse and prose. The theme is for the most part nothing but the desperate love of Aucassin, which is careless of religion, which makes him indifferent to the joy of battle and to everything, except 'Nicolette ma tres-douce mie,' and which is, of course, at last rewarded.