y father's workroom.
He hasn't yet put off, in spite of all his late intercourse with the
great world, his distant and preoccupied manner--a manner, it is true,
the same to every one. It is certainly not through pride in his
success, as some might fancy, for he was thus always. It is rather as
if, with all that success, life and its daily social routine were
somewhat of a burden to him.

April 1714.

At last we shall understand something of that new style of his--the
Watteau style--so much relished by the fine people at Paris. He has
taken it into his kind head to paint and decorate our chief salon--the
room with the three long windows, which occupies the first floor of the
house.

The room was a landmark, as we used to think, an inviolable milestone
and landmark, of old Valenciennes fashion--that sombre style, indulging
much in contrasts of black or deep brown with white, which the
Spaniards left behind them here. Doubtless their eyes had found its
shadows cool and pleasant, when they shut themselves in from the
cutting sunshine of their own country. But in our country, [21] where
we must needs economise not the shade but the sun, its grandiosity
weighs a little on one's spirits. Well! the rough plaster we used to
cover as well as might be with morsels of old figured arras-work, is
replaced by dainty panelling of wood, with mimic columns, and a quite
aerial scrollwork around sunken spaces of a pale-rose stuff and certain
oval openings--two over the doors, opening on each side of the great
couch which faces the windows, one over the chimney-piece, and one
above the buffet which forms its vis-a-vis--four spaces in all, to be
filled by and by with "fantasies" of the Four Seasons, painted by his
own hand. He will send us from Paris arm-chairs of a new pattern he
has devised, suitably covered, and a painted clavecin. Our old silver
candlesticks look well on the chimney-piece. Odd, faint-coloured
flowers fill coquettishly the little empty spaces here and there, like
ghosts of nosegays left by visitors long ago, which paled thus,
sympathetically, at the decease of their old owners; for, in spite of
its new-fashionedness, all this array is really less like a new thing
than the last surviving result of all the more lightsome adornments of
past times. Only, the very walls seem to cry out:--No! to make
delicate insinuation, for a music, a conversation, nimbler than any we
have known, or are likely to find here. For