Long before this development of an artificial species had been consummated--from the beginning of the 14th century onwards--the famous fraternity or professional union of the Basoche (clerks of the Parlement and the Châtelet) had been entrusted with the conduct of popular festivals at Paris, in which, as of right, they took a prominent personal share; and from a date unknown they had performed plays. But after the _Confrérie de la Passion_ had been allowed to monopolize the religious drama, the _basochiens_ had confined themselves to the presentment of moralities and of farces (from Italian _farsa_, Latin _farcita_), in which political satire had as a matter of course when possible found a place. A third association, calling themselves the _Enfans sans souci_, had, apparently also early in the 15th century, acquired celebrity by their performances of short comic plays called soties--in which, as it would seem, at first allegorical figures ironically "played the fool," but which were probably before long not very carefully kept distinct from the farces of the Basoche, and were like these on occasion made to serve the purposes of State or of Church. Other confraternities and associations readily took a leaf out of the book of these devil-may-care good-fellows, and interwove their religious and moral plays with comic scenes and characters from actual life, thus becoming more and more free and secular in their dramatic methods, and unconsciously preparing the transition to the regular drama. The earliest example of a serious secular play known to have been written in the French tongue is the _Estoire de Griseldis_ (1393); which is in the style of the miracles of the Virgin, but is largely indebted to Petrarch. The _Mystère du siege d'Orléans_, on the other hand, written about half a century later, in the epic tediousness of its manner comes near to a chronicle history, and interests us chiefly as the earliest of many efforts to bring Joan of Arc on the stage. Jacques Milet's celebrated mystery of the _Destruction de Troye la grant_ (1452) seems to have been addressed to readers and not to hearers only. The beginnings of the French regular comic drama are again more difficult to extract from the copious literature of farces and soties, which, after mingling actual types with abstract and allegorical figures, gradually came to exclude all but the concrete personages; moreover, the large majority of these productions in their extant form belong to a later period than that now under consideration. But there is ample evidence that the most famous of all medieval farces, the immortal _Maistre Pierre Pathelin_ (otherwise _L'Avocat Pathelin_), was written before 1470 and acted by the _basochiens_; and we may conclude that this delightful story of the biter bit, and the profession outwitted, typifies a multitude of similar comic episodes of real life, dramatized for the delectation of clerks, lawyers and students, and of all lovers of laughter.