e pipe and the goat-footed Gods, the
laughter of the _Cyclops_ of Euripides and the _Evohe_ of Ronsard, the
licentious triumphs, the ivy-crowned Joys;

"_Et la libre cadence
De leur danse._"

These gods have gone, and Rubens, who lives again in that palette of
light and rosy flesh, wanders bewildered in these _fetes_, where the
riot of the senses is stilled,--animated caprices which seem to await
the crack of a whip to dissolve and disappear in the realm of fancy like
a mid-summer night's dream! It is Cythera; but it is Watteau's. It is
love, but it is a poetic love, a love that dreams and thinks; modern
love, with its aspirations and its crown of melancholy.

Yes, at the heart of this work of Watteau's, I do not know what slow and
vague harmony murmurs behind those laughing words; I do not know what
musical and sweetly contagious sorrow is diffused throughout these
gallant _fetes_. Like the fascination of Venice, I do not know what
veiled and sighing poetry in low tones holds here the charmed spirit.
The man has passed across his work; and this work you come to regard as
the play and distraction of a suffering thought, like the playthings of
a sick child who is now dead....

But let us speak of that masterpiece of French masterpieces, that canvas
which has held a distinguished place on one of the walls of the _salon
carre_ for fifty years, _L'Embarquement de Cythere_.

Observe all that ground lightly coated with a transparent and golden
varnish, all that ground covered with rapid strokes of the brush lightly
laid on with a delicate touch. Notice that green of the trees shot
through with red tones, penetrated with quivering air, and the vaporous
light of autumn. Notice the delicate water-colour effect of thick oil,
the general smoothness of the canvas, the relief of this pouch or hood;
notice the full modelling of the little faces with their glances in the
confused outlines of the eye and their smiles in the suggested outlines
of the mouth. The beautiful and flowing sweep of the brush over those
_decolletages_, the bare flesh glowing with voluptuous rose among the
shadows of the wood! The pretty crossings of the brush to round a neck!
The beautiful undulating folds with soft breaks like those which the
modeller makes in the clay! And the spirit and the gallantry of touch of
Watteau's brush in the feminine trifles and headdresses and
finger-tips,--and everything it approaches! And the harmony of those
sunlit di