The same spirit which has just been described found even fuller expression, with greater advantages of scale and setting, in the _Heptameron_[184] of Marguerite of Navarre. The exact authorship of this celebrated book is something of a literary puzzle. Marguerite was a prolific author, if all the works which were published under her name be unhesitatingly ascribed[185] to her. Besides the poems printed under the pretty title of _Les Marguerites de la Marguerite_, she produced many other works, as well as the _Heptameron_ which was not given to the world until after her death (1558). The House of Valois was by no means destitute of literary talent. But that which seems most likely to be the Queen's genuine work hardly corresponds with the remarkable power shown in the _Heptameron_. On the other hand, Marguerite for years maintained a literary court, in which all the most celebrated men of the time, notably Marot and Bonaventure des Periers, held places. If it were allowable to decide literary questions simply by considerations of probability, there could be little hesitation in assigning the entire _Heptameron_ to Des Periers himself, and then its unfinished condition would be intelligible enough. The general opinion of critics, however, is that it was probably the result of the joint work of the Queen, of Des Periers, and of a good many other men, and probably some women, of letters. The idea and plan of the work are avowedly borrowed from Boccaccio, but the thing is worked out with so much originality that it becomes nothing so little as an imitation. A company of ladies and gentlemen returning from Cauterets are detained by bad weather in an out-of-the-way corner of the Pyrenees, and beguile the time by telling stories. The interludes, however, in which the tale-tellers are brought on the stage in person, are more circumstantial than those of the Decameron, and the individual characters are much more fully worked out. Indeed, the mere setting of the book, independently of its seventy-two stories (for the eighth day is begun), makes a very interesting tale, exhibiting not merely those characteristics of the time and its society which have been noticed in connection with the _Contes et Joyeux Devis_, but, in addition, a certain religiosity in which that time and society were also by no means deficient, though it existed side by side with freethinking of a daring kind and with unbridled licentiousness. The head of the party, Dame Oisille, is the chief representative of this religious spirit, though all the party are more or less penetrated by it. The subjects of the tales do not differ much from those of Boccaccio, though they are, as a rule, occupied with a higher class of society, and of necessity display a more polished condition of manners. They are much longer than the anecdotes of the _Contes et Joyeux Devis_, and generally, though not always, deal with something like a connected story instead of with mere isolated traits or apophthegms.