The Heptameron, constructed, as its name indicates, on the lines of the Decameron of Boccaccio, consists of seventy-two short stories told to each other by a company of ladies and gentlemen who are stopped in the journey homewards from Cauterets by the swelling of a river.
Baffled he turned homewards, but died on the way.
In pursuit of his art he travelled, and is said to have reached England; ill-health drove him homewards in 1524, in which year he married Dirckgen Willems at Delft.
When the spring had come, being still very poor and in feeble health, he started homewards on foot by Florence, across the Apennines, through Bologna, Parma, Piacenza, Turin, over the Alps, through Savoy and Dauphine to Lyons, andfinally to Paris, where he arrived in excellent health.
In April 1793 he unexpectedly received tidings of the death of Lady Sheffield; and the motive of friendship thus supplied combined with the pressure of public events to urge him homewards.
