The middle age, then, had the short story, but did not recognise, or did not value, that opportunity. Not only does Boccaccio employ the form seldom and, as it were, quite casually, but subsequent writers do not carry it forward. In fact, they practically ignore it. _Les cent nouvelles nouvelles_ (1450–1460), most famous of French collections, shows no discernment of Boccaccio’s nicer art. In form, as in subject, there is no essential change from the habit of antiquity. True, here and there among the everlasting _histoires grivoises_ is a piece of greater consistency and artistic promise. That delicious story (the sixth _nouvelle_) of the drunken man who insisted on making his confession on the highway to a priest unfortunately passing, who had absolution at the point of the knife, and then resolved to die before he lapsed from the state of grace, is not only a short-story plot; it goes so far toward short-story form as to focus upon a few hours. Yet even this hints the short story to us because we look back from the achieved form. After all it remains anecdote; and it has few peers in all the huge collection. Bandello (1480–1562), in this regard, shows even a retrogression from Boccaccio. His brief romances are looser, often indeed utterly extravagant of time and space. His anecdotes, though they often have a stir of action, show less sense of bringing people together on the stage. So the _Heptameron_ (1558–1559) of the Queen of Navarre fails--so in general subsequent tale-mongers fail--to appreciate the distinctive value of the terser form. Up to the nineteenth century the short story was merely sporadic. It was achieved now and again by writers of too much artistic sense to be quite unaware of its value; but it never took its place as an accepted form. [Sidenote: Nodier.]