counts--how modestly, and almost as
a matter of course!--his late successes. And yet!--does he, in writing
to these old people, purposely underrate his great good fortune and
seeming happiness, not to shock them too much by the contrast between
the delicate enjoyments of the life he now leads among the wealthy and
refined, and that bald existence of theirs in his old home? A life,
agitated, exigent, unsatisfying! That is what this letter really
discloses, below so attractive a surface. As his gift expands so does
that incurable restlessness one supposed but the humour natural to a
promising youth who had still everything to do. And now the only
realised enjoyment he has of all this might seem to be the thought of
the independence it has purchased him, so that he can escape from one
lodging-place to another, just as it may please him. He has already
deserted, somewhat incontinently, more than one of those [19] fine
houses, the liberal air of which he used so greatly to affect, and
which have so readily received him. Has he failed truly to grasp the
fact of his great success and the rewards that lie before him? At all
events, he seems, after all, not greatly to value that dainty world he
is now privileged to enter, and has certainly but little relish for his
own works--those works which I for one so thirst to see.

March 1714.

We were all--Jean-Philippe, Michelle Watteau, and ourselves--half in
expectation of a visit from Antony; and to-day, quite suddenly, he is
with us. I was lingering after early Mass this morning in the church
of Saint Vaast. It is good for me to be there. Our people lie under
one of the great marble slabs before the jube, some of the memorial
brass balusters of which are engraved with their names and the dates of
their decease. The settle of carved oak which runs all round the wide
nave is my father's own work. The quiet spaciousness of the place is
itself like a meditation, an "act of recollection," and clears away the
confusions of the heart. I suppose the heavy droning of the carillon
had smothered the sound of his footsteps, for on my turning round, when
I supposed myself alone, Antony Watteau was standing near me. Constant
observer as he is of the lights and shadows of things, he visits [20]
places of this kind at odd times. He has left Jean-Baptiste at work in
Paris, and will stay this time with the old people, not at our house;
though he has spent the better part of to-day in m