The best of them are animated by the same spirit of refined voluptuousness which animates so much of the writing and art of the time, and which may indeed be said to be its chief feature. But this spirit has seldom been presented in a light so attractive as that which it bears in the _Heptameron_. [Sidenote: Noel du Fail.] [Sidenote: G. Bouchet.] [Sidenote: Cholieres.] The influence of Rabelais on the one hand, of the _Heptameron_ on the other, is observable in almost all the work of the same kind which the second half of the sixteenth century produced. The fantastic buffoonery and the indiscriminate prodigality of learning, which were to the outward eye the distinguishing characteristics of _Pantagruel_, found however more imitators than the poetical sentiment of the _Heptameron_. The earliest of the successors of Rabelais was Noel du Fail, a gentleman and magistrate of Britanny, who, five years before the master's death, produced two little books, _Propos Rustiques_[186] and _Baliverneries_, which depict rural life and its incidents with a good deal of vividness and colour. The imitation of Rabelais is very perceptible, and sometimes a little irritating, but the work on the whole has merit, and abounds in curious local traits. The _Propos Rustiques_, too, are interesting because they underwent a singular travesty in the next century, and appeared under a new and misleading title. Much later, near forty years afterwards in fact, Du Fail produced the _Contes d'Eutrapel_[187], which are rather critical and satirical dialogues than tales. There is a good deal of dry humour in them. The provinciality to be noticed in Du Fail was still a feature of French literature; and in this particular department it long continued to be prominent, perhaps owing to the example of Rabelais, who, wide as is his range, frequently takes pleasure in mixing up petty local matters with his other materials. Thus, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, Guillaume Bouchet (to be carefully distinguished from Jean Bouchet, the poet of the early sixteenth century) wrote a large collection of _Serees_[188] (Soirees), containing gossip on a great variety of subjects, mingled with details of Angevin manners; and Tabourot des Accords composed his _Escraignes Dijonnaises_. A singular book, or rather two singular books[189], _Les Matinees_ and _Les Apres-Dinees_, were produced by a person, the Seigneur de Cholieres, of whom little else is known. Cholieres is a bad writer, and a commonplace if not stupid thinker; but he tells some quaint stories, and his book shows us the deep hold which the example of Rabelais had given to the practice of discussing grave subjects in a light tone. [Sidenote: Apologie pour Herodote.] [Sidenote: Moyen de Parvenir.]