me dark
haven reserved for by-gone modes, and these new gods were exquisite
as fairies while voluptuous as courtesans. They were all caught young
and set, while still adolescent and slender, in suitable niches of
delicate surroundings.

The talent of Audran, not content with figures alone, was lavishly
expended on those ingenious decorative designs which formed the frame
and setting of the figures, the airy world in which they lived and in
the borders that confined the whole.

Only a study of tapestries or their photographs can show the radical
depth of the change from the styles prevailing under the influence of
Madame de Maintenon to those produced by Audran and his school under
the regence. The difference in character of the two dominations is the
very evident cause. It is as though the severe moral pose of de
Maintenon had suppressed a whole Pandora's box of loves and graces
who, when the lid was lifted by the Regent, flew, a happy crew, to fix
themselves in dainty decorative effect, trailing with them their
complement of accessory flowers, butterflies, clouds and tempered
grotesques.

Philippe d'Orleans, under the influence of the corrupt cleverness of
Cardinal du Bois, celebrated the few years of his regency by
bankrupting France with John Law's financial fallacies (this was the
time of the South Sea Bubble and the Mississippi scheme) and by
returning to Spain her princess as unsuited for the boy king's
mate--with war as the natural result of that insult.

But he also let artists have their way, and the style that they
supplied him, shows a talented invention unsurpassed. Audran we will
place at the top, but only to fix a name, for there was a whole army
of men composing the tapestry designs that so delighted the people of
those days and that have gone on thrilling their beholders for two
hundred years, and which distinguish French designs from all
others--which give them that indefinable quality of grace and softness
that we denominate French. Wizards in design were the artists who
developed it and those who continue it in our own times.

CHAPTER XII

THE GOBELINS FACTORY (_Continued_)

Audran had in his studio Andre Watteau, whose very name spells
sophisticated pastorals of exceeding loveliness. Watteau worked with
Audran when he was producing his most inspired set of tapestry, on
which we must dwell for a bit for pure pleasure. This set is called
the _Portieres des Dieux_.

That they were po