Here, perhaps, better than elsewhere, may be mentioned the name of one of the best, if not the best, purely narrative writer of French prose during the century, Herberay des Essarts. It is to Herberay that the famous romance of _Amadis of Gaul_ owes most of its fame. According to the most probable story, the _Amadis_ was originally translated by the Spaniard Montalvo from a lost Portuguese original of the fourteenth century. There is absolutely no trace of a French original, the existence of which has been assumed by French critics. In form the _Amadis_ is a long prose Roman d'Aventures, distinguished only from its French companions and predecessors by a somewhat higher strain of romantic sentiment, and by a greater abundance of giants, dwarfs, witches, and other condiments, which, even in its most luxuriant day, the simpler and more academic French taste had known how to do without, or at most, to apply moderately. It had been continued in the Spanish by more than one author, and was a very voluminous work when, in 1540, Herberay undertook to give a French version of it. He, in his turn, had continuators, but none who equalled his popularity or power. Readers of the Spanish complain that Herberay has not been a faithful translator, and, in particular, that he has been guilty of no few anachronisms. He probably troubled himself very little about exact fidelity or strict local and temporal colour. But he ranks, in order of time, second only to Calvin in the production of a clear, elegant, and scholarly French prose style. The book became immensely popular. It is said that it was the usual reading book for foreign students of French for a considerable period, and it was highly thought of by the best critics (such as Pasquier) of its own and the next generation. It had moreover a great influence on what came after it. To no single book can be so clearly traced the heroic romances of the early seventeenth century. [Sidenote: Palissy.]