ages.

Indeed Bandello's novels[7] reflect as in a mirror all the worst sides
of Italian Renaissance life. The complete collapse of all the older
sanctions of right conduct, the execrable example given by the petty
courts, the heads of which were reckless because their position was so
insecure, the great growth of wealth and luxury, all combined to make
Italy one huge hot-bed of unblushing vice. The very interest in
individuality, the spectator-attitude towards life, made men ready to
treat life as one large experiment, and for such purposes vice is as
important as right living even though it ultimately turns out to be as
humdrum as virtue. The Italian nobles treated life in this experimental
way and the novels of Bandello and others give us the results of their
experiments. The _Novellieri_ were thus the "realists" of their day and
of them all Bandello was the most realistic. He claims to give only
incidents that really happened and makes this his excuse for telling
many incidents that should never have happened. It is but fair to add
that his most vicious tales are his dullest.

[Footnote 7: The Villon Society is to publish this year a complete
translation of Bandello by Mr. John Payne.]

That cannot be said of Queen Margaret of Navarre, who carries on the
tradition of the _Novellieri_, and is represented in Painter by some of
her best stories. She intended to give a Decameron of one hundred
stories--the number comes from the _Cento novelle antichi_, before
Boccaccio--but only got so far as the second novel of the eighth day. As
she had finished seven days her collection is known as the Heptameron.
How much of it she wrote herself is a point on which the doctors
dispute. She had in her court men like Clement Marot, and Bonaventure
des Periers, who probably wrote some of the stories. Bonaventure des
Periers in particular, had done much in the same line under his own
name, notably the collection known as _Cymbalum Mundi_. Marguerite's
other works hardly prepare us for the narrative skill, the easy grace of
style and the knowledge of certain aspects of life shown in the
_Heptameron_. On the other hand the framework, which is more elaborate
than in Boccaccio or any of his school, is certainly from one hand, and
the book does not seem one that could have been connected with the
Queen's name unless she had really had much to do with it. Much of its
piquancy comes from the thought of the association of one whose li