Brantôme further relates a midnight attack upon Bussy, about a month later, by a number of his jealous rivals, when he had a narrow escape from death. Of this incident another account has been given by Margaret of Valois in her _Mémoires_. Margaret and her brother, the Duke of Anjou, were devoted to one another, and Bussy was for a time a paramour of the Queen of Navarre. Though she denies the liaison, she says of him that there was not "_en ce siècle-là de son sexe et de sa qualité rien de semblable en valeur, reputation, grace, et esprit_." Margaret, L'Estoile, and Brantôme all relate similar incidents during Bussy's sojourn at court in the year 1578, and the last-named adds: "_Si je voulois raconter toutes les querelles qu'il a eues, j'aurois beaucoup affaire; hélas! il en a trop eu, et toutes les a desmeslées à son très-grand honneur et heur. Il en vouloit souvant par trop à 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 âme! Mais il mourut (quand il trespassa) un preux trés vaillant et généreux._" 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 _Historiæ 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, François 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, à fin de n'affliger pas tant les familles de ceux qui en ont donné le sujet._"