of his
head--striped all over like a zebra, proud as a god, and drunk as a
Silenus! It is the _Comedie Italienne_ that plays the guitar in all
these landscapes....

Here is the new Olympus and the new mythology; the Olympus of all the
demi-gods forgotten by antiquity. Here is the deification of the ideas
of the Eighteenth Century, the soul of Watteau's world and time led to
the Pantheon of human passions and fashions. These are the new humours
of aging humanity--Languor, Gallantry, and Reverie, which Watteau
incarnates as clothed allegories, and which he rests upon the _pulvinar_
of a divine nature; these are the moral muses of our age out of which he
has created the women, or, we might say, the goddesses of these divine
pictures.

Love is the light of this world, it penetrates and fills it. It is the
youth and serenity of it; and amidst rivers and mountains, promenades
and gardens, lakes and fountains, the Paradise of Watteau unfolds; it is
Cythera. Under a sky painted with the colours of summer, the galley of
Cleopatra swings at the bank. The waves are stilled. The woods are
hushed. From the grass to the firmament, beating the motionless air with
their butterfly wings, a host of Cupids fly, fly, play and dance, here
tying careless couples with roses, and tying above a circlet of kisses
that has risen from earth to the sky. Here is the temple, here is the
end of this world: the painter's _L'Amour paisible_, Love disarmed,
seated in the shadows, which the poet of Theos wished to engrave upon a
sweet cup of spring; a smiling Arcadia; a Decameron of sentiment; a
tender meditation; attentions with vague glances; words that lull the
soul; a platonic gallantry, a leisure occupied by the heart, an idleness
of youthful company; a court of amorous thoughts; the emotional and
playful courtesy of the young newly married leaning upon the offered
arm; eyes without fever, desire without appetite, voluptuousness without
desire, audacious gestures regulated like the ballet for a spectacle,
and tranquil defences disdainful of haste through their security; the
romance of the body and the mind, soothed, pacified, resuscitated,
happy; an idleness of passion at which the stone satyrs lurking in the
green _coulisses_ laugh with their goat-laughter. Adieu to the
bacchanales led by Gillot, that last pagan of the Renaissance, born of
the libations of the Pleiad to the rustic gods of Arcueil! Adieu to the
Olympus of the _Io Paean_, the hoars