and hear him give
his pontifical blessing, in a voice feeble but of infinite sweetness,
and with an inexpressibly graceful movement of the hands. A veritable
grand seigneur! His refined old age, the impress of genius and [24]
honours, even his disappointments, concur with natural graces to make
him seem too distinguished (a fitter word fails me) for this world.
Omnia vanitas! he seems to say, yet with a profound resignation, which
makes the things we are most of us so fondly occupied with look petty
enough. Omnia vanitas! Is that indeed the proper comment on our
lives, coming, as it does in this case, from one who might have made
his own all that life has to bestow? Yet he was never to be seen at
court, and has lived here almost as an exile. Was our "Great King
Lewis" jealous of a true grand seigneur or grand monarque by natural
gift and the favour of heaven, that he could not endure his presence?

July 1714.

My own portrait remains unfinished at his sudden departure. I sat for
it in a walking-dress, made under his direction--a gown of a peculiar
silken stuff, falling into an abundance of small folds, giving me "a
certain air of piquancy" which pleases him, but is far enough from my
true self. My old Flemish faille, which I shall always wear, suits me
better.

I notice that our good-hearted but sometimes difficult friend said
little of our brother Jean-Baptiste, though he knows us so anxious on
his account--spoke only of his constant industry, [25] cautiously, and
not altogether with satisfaction, as if the sight of it wearied him.

September 1714.

Will Antony ever accomplish that long-pondered journey to Italy? For
his own sake, I should be glad he might. Yet it seems desolately far,
across those great hills and plains. I remember how I formed a plan
for providing him with a sum sufficient for the purpose. But that he
no longer needs.

With myself, how to get through time becomes sometimes the
question,--unavoidably; though it strikes me as a thing unspeakably sad
in a life so short as ours. The sullenness of a long wet day is
yielding just now to an outburst of watery sunset, which strikes from
the far horizon of this quiet world of ours, over fields and
willow-woods, upon the shifty weather-vanes and long-pointed windows of
the tower on the square--from which the Angelus is sounding--with a
momentary promise of a fine night. I prefer the Salut at Saint Vaast.
The walk thither is a longer one,