However, after defending his thesis before the Law School at Caen, on 19 August 1608, Patrix soon found out this line of duty to be utterly unattractive to him.
He contentedly kept this lifestyle until the age of forty, when, seeing himself left with very little in way of income, he sought to improve his prosperity for joining Gaston, Duke of Orléans, the brother of Louis XIV, as first marshal-master.
The prince's bright and cheerful court in residence at Blois surpassed his brother's in terms of politeness, in agreement, and good taste.
As he was on the end of his life, and concerned about death, he wrote, a few days before his end, those famous lines: Je songeais cette nuit, que de mal consumé Côte à côte d'un pauvre on m'avait inhumé ; Mais ne pouvant souffrir ce fâcheux voisinage.
Retire toi, Coquin, va pourrir loin d'ici, Il ne t'appartient pas de m'approcher ainsi.
[3]Patrix left a La Miséricorde de Dieu sur la conduite d'un pécheur pénitent, avec quelques autres pieces chrestiennes, le tout composé et mis en lumiere par luy-mesme, en réparation du passé,[4] a collection he dedicated to the Duke of Orléans.
"Ce recueil", Huet wrote in his Les Origines de Caen, "mérite d'être conservé pour sa singularité; car encore que les vers soient sort négligés, languissants, sentent le terroir Normand et le déclin de l'âge, l'on y voit néanmoins briller cet esprit original d'où ils sont partis, et l'on y reconnait un cœur touché d'une piété sincère.
A friend of his fellow denizen Malherbe, Patrix had committed several gallant, even quite licentious pieces,[6] in his youth, but at a later age, when the spirit of devotion took him over, he conducted a painstaking search, and burned the most he could, thereafter writing only on spiritual topics.