honneur et heur. Il en
vouloit souvant par trop a plusieurs, sans aucun respect; je
luy ay dict cent fois; mais il se fioit tant en sa valeur qu'il
mesprisoit tous les conseils de ses amis . . . Dieu ayt son ame!
Mais il mourut (quand il trespassa) un preux tres vaillant et
genereux._"

It is plain, therefore, that Chapman in his picture of Bussy's quarrels
and encounters-at-arms was deviating little, except in details of names
and dates, from the actual facts of history. Bussy's career was so
romantic that it was impossible for even the most inventive dramatist to
embellish it. This was especially true of its closing episode, which
occupies the later acts of Chapman's drama--the intrigue with the
Countess of Montsoreau and the tragic fate which it involved. It is
somewhat singular that the earliest narratives of the event which have
come down to us were published subsequently to the play. The statement,
accepted for a long time, that De Thou's _Historiae sui Temporis_ was the
basis of Chapman's tragedy, has been completely disproved. The passage
in which he narrates the story of Bussy's death does not occur in the
earlier editions of his work, and first found its way into the issue
published at Geneva in 1620. A similar narrative appeared in the
following year in L'Estoile's _Journal_, which first saw the light in
1621, ten years after its author's death. But under a thin disguise
there had already appeared a detailed history of Bussy's last _amour_
and his fall, though this, too, was later than Chapman's drama. A
novelist, Francois de Rosset, had published a volume of tales entitled
_Les Histoires Tragiques de Nostre Temps_. The earliest known edition is
one of 1615, though it was preceded, probably not long, by an earlier
edition full of "_fautes insupportables_," for which Rosset apologizes.
He is careful to state in his preface that he is relating "_des
histoires autant veritables que tristes et funestes. Les noms de la
pluspart des personnages sont seulement desguisez en ce Theatre, a fin
de n'affliger pas tant les familles de ceux qui en ont donne le sujet._"
The fate of Bussy forms the subject of the seventeenth history,
entitled "_De la mort pitoyable du valeureux Lysis_." Lysis was the name
under which Margaret of Valois celebrated the memory of her former lover
in a poem entitled "_L'esprit de Lysis disant adieu a sa Flore_." But
apart from this proof of identification, the details gi