Its social influence was equal to its influence upon literature. And yet, to-day, not one of all the books that had their time of glory and of popularity is more neglected. No one reads _Astrée_ now, and no one can read it; with the best will in the world, the most indulgent must throw the book down, bored by its dulness. It has become impossible to endure the five thousand pages of the amorous dissertations of the shepherds of Lignon. At the best such a debauch of subtlety would be only tolerable, even had it emanated from a writer of genius. And d'Urfé had no genius; he had nothing but talent. D'Urfé was a little gentleman of Forez, whom his epoch (he was born in 1568) had permitted to examine the society of the Valois. We know that no social body was ever more corrupt; nevertheless those who saw it were dazzled by it; and because they had looked upon it they were considered--in the time of Louis XIII.--exquisitely elegant and polite; they were regarded as the survivors of a superior civilisation. The ladies of the Court of Anne of Austria were proud of their power to attract the notice of the elderly noblemen "thanks to whom," in the words of a contemporary writer, "remnants of the polite manners brought by Catherine de Médicis from Italy were still seen in France." The homage of the antique gentlemen was insistent, of a kind which refuses to be repelled. Even the Queen accepted it. Anne of Austria, whose habitually correct attitude was notable, felt that she was constrained to receive the attentions of the old Duc de Bellegarde, though the Duke's character and customs were notorious. Duc de Bellegarde had been one of the deplorable favourites of Henri III. Anne of Austria was hypercritical in regard to forms of conversation; her own language was fastidiously delicate; she exacted minute attention to the superficial details of civility; yet the notorious de Bellegarde sat at ease before the Court, displaying all the peculiar gallantry of his epoch, "and," said the Queen's friend, Mme. de Motteville, "it was the more noticeable and the fame of it was the more scandalous because the Queen did not hesitate to accept from him incense whose smoke might well blacken her reputation. The Queen permitted the Duke to treat her as he had treated the women of his own day, a day when gallantry and women reigned." The civil wars swept away the splendid but rotten world, but the prestige of the Valois still asserted its power.