h
there are so many in this old-fashioned place. Ah! such gifts as his,
surely, may once in a way make much industry seem worth while. He
makes a wonderful progress. And yet, far from being set-up, and too
easily pleased with what, after all, comes to him so easily, he has, my
father thinks, too little self-approval for ultimate success. He is
apt, in truth, to fall out too hastily with himself and what he
produces. Yet here also there is the "golden mean." Yes! I could
fancy myself offended by a sort of irony which sometimes crosses the
half-melancholy sweetness of manner habitual with him; only that as I
can see, he treats himself to the same quality.

October 1701.

Antony Watteau comes here often now. It is the instinct of a natural
fineness in him, to escape when he can from that blank stone house,
with so little to interest, and that homely old man and woman. The
rudeness of his home has turned his feeling for even the simpler graces
of life into a physical want, like hunger or thirst, which might come
to greed; and methinks he perhaps overvalues these things. Still, made
as he is, his hard fate in that rude place must needs touch one. And
then, he profits by the experience of [8] my father, who has much
knowledge in matters of art beyond his own art of sculpture; and Antony
is not unwelcome to him. In these last rainy weeks especially, when he
can't sketch out of doors, when the wind only half dries the pavement
before another torrent comes, and people stay at home, and the only
sound from without is the creaking of a restless shutter on its hinges,
or the march across the Place of those weary soldiers, coming and going
so interminably, one hardly knows whether to or from battle with the
English and the Austrians, from victory or defeat:--Well! he has become
like one of our family. "He will go far!" my father declares. He
would go far, in the literal sense, if he might--to Paris, to Rome. It
must be admitted that our Valenciennes is a quiet, nay! a sleepy place;
sleepier than ever since it became French, and ceased to be so near the
frontier. The grass is growing deep on our old ramparts, and it is
pleasant to walk there--to walk there and muse; pleasant for a tame,
unambitious soul such as mine.

December 1702.

Antony Watteau left us for Paris this morning. It came upon us quite
suddenly. They amuse themselves in Paris. A scene-painter we have
here, well known in Flanders, has been engaged