There was an equal amount of geography and more of ancient history in the _Ariane_ (1632) of Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin (1595-1676), a book which, long neglected, has in late years been rediscovered, and which has been greeted by M. Paul Morillot as the most readable and the least tiresome of all the Heroic Romances. The type of that class of literature, however, has always been found in the highly elaborate writings of Gauthier de Coste de la Calprenede (1609-1663), which enjoyed for a time a prodigious celebrity, and were read and imitated all over Europe. La Calprenede was a Gascon soldier, imbued with all the extravagance of his race, and in full sympathy with the audacity and violence of the aristocratic society of France in his day. His _Cassandre_, which appeared in ten volumes between 1642 and 1645, is perhaps the most characteristic of all the Heroic Romances. It deals with a highly romantic epoch of ancient history, the decline of the empire of Alexander the Great. The wars of the Persians and of the Scythians are introduced, and among the characters are discovered such personages as Artaxerxes, Roxana and Ephestion. It must not be supposed, however, that la Calprenede makes the smallest effort to deal with the subject accurately or realistically. The figures are those of his own day; they are seigneurs and great ladies of the court of Louis XIII., masquerading in Macedonian raiment. The passion of love is dominant throughout, and it is treated in the most exalted and hyperbolical spirit. The central heroes of the story, Oroondate and Lysimachus, are dignified, eloquent and amorous; they undergo unexampled privations in the quest of incomparable ladies whose beauty and whose nobility is only equalled by their magnificent loyalty. These books were written with an aim that was partly didactic. Their object was to entertain the ladies and to gratify a taste for endlessly wire-drawn sentimentality, but it was also to teach fortitude and grandeur of soul and to inculcate lessons of practical chivalry. La Calprenede followed up the success of his _Cassandre_ with a _Cleopatre_ (1647) in twelve volumes, and a _Faramond_ (1661) which he did not live to finish. He became more extravagant, more rhapsodical as he proceeded, and he lost all the little hold on history which he had ever held. _Cleopatre_, nevertheless, enjoyed a prodigious popularity, and it became the fashion to emulate as far as possible the prowess of its magnificent hero, the proud Artaban. It should be said that la Calprenede objected to his books being styled romances, and insisted that they were specimens of "history embellished with certain inventions." He may, in opposition to his wishes, claim the doubtful praise of being, in reality, the creator of the modern historical novel. He was immediately imitated or accompanied by a large number of authors, of whom two have achieved a certain immortality, which, unhappily, must be confessed to be partly of ridicule.