Abstract: The first three volumes of the Histoires tragiques by Pierre Boaistuau and François de Belleforest (1559-1565) present a significant number of cases of poverty. A fearful destiny or a cause of vice for the first, it can also refer to an aurea mediocritas source of wisdom. This honest poverty is affirmed, for the second, by way of a veritable demonstrative device inscribed in the project of re-legitimising the political and social order conveyed by this narrative genre.
