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The bridegroom was a good-looking young fellow, Jean Patu, the richest farmer in the neighborhood, but he was above all things, an ardent sportsman who seemed to take leave of his senses in order to satisfy that passion, and who spent large sums on his dogs, his keepers, his ferrets and his guns.
Suddenly everyone round me exclaimed, "Look! look! he is developing himself!" And in reality he was like an elastic body which, in developing itself, would get larger. I made Patu very happy by telling him that Dupres was truly very graceful in all his movements.
"Adieu, be happy!" Patu came in five minutes after Garnier had left me: I related the adventure to him, and he thought I was a hero. "I would have acted as you have done," he observed, "but I would not have acted like Garnier."
To look for, even to suppose, modesty, amongst the nymphs of the green room, is, indeed, to be very foolish; they pride themselves upon having none, and laugh at those who are simple enough to suppose them better than they are. Thanks to my friend Patu, I made the acquaintance of all the women who enjoyed some reputation in Paris.
The next morning Patu called and made me a present of his prose panegyric on the Marechal de Saxe. We went out together and took a walk in the Tuileries, where he introduced me to Madame du Boccage, who made a good jest in speaking of the Marechal de Saxe. "It is singular," she said, "that we cannot have a 'De profundis' for a man who makes us sing the 'Te Deum' so often."
"I am a musician about as much as all my companions, not one of whom knows a note of music. The girls at the opera are not much more clever, and in spite of that, with a good voice and some taste, one can sing delightfully." I advised her to invite Patu to supper, and he was charmed with her. Some time afterwards, however, she came to a bad end, and disappeared.
Patu said, almost reverently, "It is the inimitable Dupres." I had heard of him before, and became attentive.
"Adieu, be happy!" Patu came in five minutes after Garnier had left me: I related the adventure to him, and he thought I was a hero. "I would have acted as you have done," he observed, "but I would not have acted like Garnier."
My friend Patu wished to have a copy of that portrait; one cannot refuse such a slight service to a friend, and I gave an order for it to the same painter. But the artist, having been summoned to Versailles, shewed that delightful painting with several others, and M. de St. Quentin found it so beautiful that he lost no time in shewing it the king.
We were well served, and the dinner had given us new strength, when our single-eyed hostess came, watch in hand, to announce that time was up. Pleasure at the "Hotel du Roule" was measured by the hour. I whispered to Patu, and, after a few philosophical considerations, addressing himself to madame la gouvernante, he said to her, "We will have a double dose, and of course pay double."
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