"'I am glad to hear that my cousin the Duc de Guise has not suffered himself to be cuckolded by a _mignon de couchette_ such as Saint-Mégrin; I wish all the other gilded youths about court who hang round the princesses ogling them and making love to them could receive the same treatment'...." Farther on, in the _Mémoires de l'Estoile_, came this passage, concerning the death of Bussy d'Amboise:-- "On Wednesday, 19 August, Bussy d'Amboise, first gentle-man-in-waiting of M. le Duc, Governor of Anjou, Abbé de Bourgueil, who assumed very high and mighty airs, because of the partiality of his master, and who had done all kinds of evil deeds and robbed the countries of Anjou and Maine, was slain by the Seigneur de Monsoreau, together with the wicked lieutenant of Saumur, in a house belonging to the said Seigneur de Monsoreau, where, at night, the said lieutenant, who was his love messenger, had brought him to sleep that night with the wife of the said Monsoreau, to whom Bussy had for a long time made love; with whom the said lady had purposely made this false assignation in order to have him surprised by her husband, Monsoreau; when he appeared towards midnight, he was immediately surrounded and attacked by ten or a dozen men who accompanied the Seigneur de Monsoreau, and who rushed upon him in fury to massacre him: this gentleman, seeing himself so contemptibly betrayed, and that he was alone (as on such expeditions people usually prefer to be), did not, however, cease to defend himself to the last, proving, as he had often said, that _fear had never found room in his heart_;--for so long as an inch of sword remained in his hand, he fought on till only the handle was left him, and then he made use of tables, forms, chairs and stools, with which he disabled three or four of his enemies, until, overpowered by numbers and bereft of all arms and means of defending himself, he was beaten down, close to a window, from which he had tried to fling himself in the hope of escape. Such was the end of Captain Bussy...." It was from these two paragraphs relating to Bussy and to Saint-Mégrin that I built up my drama. M. Villenave told me that I should find details as to manners in two valuable books entitled the _Confession de Sancy_, and the _Ile des Hermaphrodites_. In connection with _Henri III._ it is easy to see that the dramatic gift is born with certain people. I was twenty-five years of age, _Henri III._ was my second serious piece of work: let any conscientious critic take it and submit it to the most rigorous examination and he will find plenty to blame in the style, but nothing in the plot. I have written fifty dramas since _Henri III._, but not one of them is more cleverly constructed. CHAPTER XV