(True friends a few, a nice abode,
And dinners fine and recherchés—
Far better such for peace of mind
Than Love's refrain, "Ah, lack-a-day!")
This sentiment would show him to have been a true philosopher, accepting the situation placidly, and recognising that in love there is always one who kisses and the other who extends the cheek. "Fine and delicate dinners!"—therein, of a truth, may be found a marvellous panacea for lacerated affections and the buffets of the world. To be sure, he had already belonged for many years to a society known as the Société des Mercredis, composed of seventeen members, who were in the habit of dining weekly at the Rocher de Cancale, then the most celebrated restaurant of Paris. But it was not until Cupid frowned, in the person of Mlle. Mézeray, that he turned seriously to gastronomy and made it a profession. The fact that he had already been married for ten years in no wise detracts from the value of his recipe—a medication for melancholy that has been overlooked in the "Anatomy." The key-note of his verses on the occasion was emphasised by a postscript extolling the pleasures of the table, a paragraph that appeared subsequently in an amended form in the "Almanach." Already in this ebullition of a misogynist for the moment, we detect the redundant fancy and familiarity with his theme which marked the great gastronomer who was soon to wield his facile pen in the interests of the science of which he became the exponent-in-chief:
"The author of this abnegation, who some day intends publishing a panegyric of gastronomy, has always regarded the pleasures of good cheer as the first of the mind and the senses. It will be acknowledged that these are the first one enjoys, and those that may be most often multiplied. Who may say as much of the rest? Is there a woman, however beautiful, who is worth these admirable red partridges of Languedoc or Cévennes; these pâtés de foie of geese and ducks which will forever celebrate the cities of Toulouse, Auch, and Strassburg; these stuffed tongues of Troyes; these sausages of Arles that render the pig so estimable and so precious? Can one compare a pretty, simpering face with these splendid sheep of Ganges and the Ardennes whose flesh fairly melts in one's mouth? What comparison can be made between a piquante face and these pullets of Bresse, these capons of Mans?... Who would oppose to these delights the caprices of a woman, her poutings, her vagaries, her refusals, and even her favours?"
In quite a different strain, a few years later, we shall hear him compare a peach—ripe, rosy, juicy, and melting—to lovely femininity, and in the amended form of the note that accompanied his renunciation perceive his greater delicacy of touch, as well as mark his conversion to the doctrine of Désaugiers:
"Pour être aimé des belles,
Aimons;
Un beau jour changent-elles,