The first achievement which Bussy is known to have performed stamps his name with infamy. He was engaged in a lawsuit against the marquis of Renel, one of his relations, to recover from him the marquisate, which Bussy claimed as his right. The marquis had come to Paris, with the king of Navarre, and was there when the massacre of St. Bartholomew took place. In the midst of the carnage, Bussy sought him out, and stabbed him to the heart. The parliament, soon after, passed a decree, admitting the murderer’s claim; but it is consolatory to find that the decree was subsequently annulled. Having attached himself to the duke of Alençon, he was entrusted with the government of the castle of Angers, and he soon made himself universally hated, by his extortion and tyranny. When he visited the court with his master, his arrogance and audacity rose to such a height, that the king’s favourites, whom he had often insulted, at length formed a scheme to assassinate him. The attack was made at night, and with superior numbers; but it was foiled by the skill and resolution of Bussy and his followers. The monarch himself was not safe from the contemptuous sarcasms of Bussy. In their dress, Henry and his minions carried to the most extravagant length the costly and absurd fashions of that period. Bussy one day attended his patron to court. He himself was simply dressed, but he was followed by six pages, clad in cloth of gold, and tricked out in the most approved style of finery. That the point of this silent satire might not be lost, he insultingly proclaimed aloud, that “the time was come when ragamuffins would make the most show!” The king was so irritated by this language, that, for a while, the duke was obliged to forbid Bussy from appearing in his train. About the same time, Bussy gave fresh cause of offence to the king. Ever seeking an opportunity to indulge his passion for duelling, he had wantonly quarrelled with a gentleman named St. Phal. Looking at some embroidery, St. Phal remarked that the letter X was worked on it; Bussy, from sheer contradiction, asserted that the letter was a Y. A duel of six against six in consequence took place, and Bussy was slightly wounded. As, however, Bussy sent his antagonist a second challenge, and expressed a stubborn determination to follow up the quarrel to the last extremity, the king interposed to put an end to it. Bussy reluctantly consented to meet St. Phal, in the king’s presence, for the purpose of reconcilement, and when, with that intent, he went to the Louvre, he was accompanied into the palace by a band of two hundred determined partisans. The anger of the king was excited by this irruption of bravos, but for the present he restrained it.