o deep as to make
it seem that the course of [39] their lives could hardly have been
other than it was. That impression comes, perhaps, wholly of the
writer's skill; but, at all events, I must read the book no more.

June 1718.

And he has allowed that Mademoiselle Rosalba--"ce bel esprit"--who can
discourse upon the arts like a master, to paint his portrait: has
painted hers in return! She holds a lapful of white roses with her two
hands. Rosa Alba--himself has inscribed it! It will be engraved, to
circulate and perpetuate it the better.

One's journal, here in one's solitude, is of service at least in this,
that it affords an escape for vain regrets, angers, impatience. One
puts this and that angry spasm into it, and is delivered from it so.

And then, it was at the desire of M. de Crozat that the thing was done.
One must oblige one's patrons. The lady also, they tell me, is
consumptive, like Antony himself, and like to die. And he, who has
always lacked either the money or the spirits to make that
long-pondered, much-desired journey to Italy, has found in her work the
veritable accent and colour of those old Venetian masters he would so
willingly have studied under the sunshine of their own land. Alas! How
little peace have his great successes given him; how little of [40]
that quietude of mind, without which, methinks, one fails in true
dignity of character.

November 1718.

His thirst for change of place has actually driven him to England, that
veritable home of the consumptive. Ah me! I feel it may be the
finishing stroke. To have run into the native country of consumption!
Strange caprice of that desire to travel, which he has really indulged
so little in his life--of the restlessness which, they tell me, is
itself a symptom of this terrible disease!

January 1720.

As once before, after long silence, a token has reached us, a slight
token that he remembers--an etched plate, one of very few he has
executed, with that old subject: Soldiers on the March. And the weary
soldier himself is returning once more to Valenciennes, on his way from
England to Paris.

February 1720.

Those sharply-arched brows, those restless eyes which seem larger than
ever--something that seizes on one, and is almost terrible, in his
expression--speak clearly, and irresistibly set one on the thought of a
summing-up of his life.

[41] I am reminded of the day when, already with that air of seemly
thought, le bel se