More limited in scope than the other tales of the period, they at least accomplish their aim, that is, they give us a swift and entertaining narrative. "A little tale wearies less than a long one," says one of the prologues, and most of the _fabliaux_ contrive to tell their story in four or five hundred lines. Peculiarly Gallic in character, they influenced the literature of other countries less than did the French lays and romances, they were less often imitated and translated. In France they were popular for two hundred years; then we hear no more of them. But in the fifteenth century, when printed books and the stage were taking the place of the minstrel, we find, as M. de Montaiglon points out, similar plots and situations, the same shrewd though not deep observation, the same fashion of treating the every-day incidents of life from the comic point of view recurring again in the farces. The church in the middle ages looked askance upon the minstrels and their stock in trade; the sermons of the time denounce their "ignoble fables," their "tales all falsehood and lying." But the church did not only censure, it tried to supplant, and produced within its own boundaries, quite apart from its more learned work in Latin, a large body of narrative literature in the vulgar tongue. These religious stories were written by lay clerks or by monks in the monastery schools, and like other tales were spread abroad by minstrels. Those who recited them were shown some favour, and M. Petit de Julleville quotes a _Somme de Penitence_ of the thirteenth century which would admit to the sacraments those "jongleurs who sing the exploits of princes and the lives of the saints, and use their instruments of music to console men in their sadness and weariness." Besides the lives of saints we have tales of miracles performed by Our Lady, tales of penitence, tales of good counsel. As a whole they are less interesting than the lay literature of the time. Written for edification, many of them are rather bare little "examples" and their authors show themselves more concerned with the lesson in point than with the story. Others are told with more elaboration and skill and give us good tale-telling. Sometimes, as in _The Angel and the Hermit_, an ancient story is given a mediæval setting. M. Gaston Paris, in _La Poésie au Moyen Age_, has traced the history of this tale, which, originally of Jewish invention, has travelled all over Europe; a tale that was given a place in the _Koran_, and that was told both by Luther and Voltaire, besides its good rendering by some unknown clerk of France. Another story, _Theophilus_, gives a version of the Faust legend, and tells the story of a man who has made a compact with the devil, but who in this case is saved in the end by Our Lady.