rieux, he was found sketching, with so much truth to
the inmost mind in them, those picturesque mountebanks at the Fair in
the Grande Place; and I find, throughout his course of life, something
of the essential melancholy of the comedian. He, so fastidious and
cold, and who has never "ventured the representation of passion," does
but amuse the gay world; and is aware of that, though certainly
unamused himself all the while. Just now, however, he is finishing a
very different picture--that too, full of humour--an English
family-group, with a little girl tiding a wooden horse: the father, and
the mother holding his tobacco-pipe, stand in the centre.

March 1720.

To-morrow he will depart finally. And this evening the Syndics of the
Academy of Saint Luke came with their scarves and banners to conduct
their illustrious fellow-citizen, by torch-light, to supper in their
Guildhall, where all their beautiful old corporation plate will be
displayed. The Watteau salon was lighted up to receive them. There is
something in the payment of great honours to the living which fills one
with apprehension, especially when the recipient of them looks so like
a dying man. God have mercy on him!

[42]

April 1721.

We were on the point of retiring to rest last evening when a messenger
arrived post-haste with a letter on behalf of Antony Watteau, desiring
Jean-Baptiste's presence at Paris. We did not go to bed that night;
and my brother was on his way before daylight, his heart full of a
strange conflict of joy and apprehension.

May 1721.

A letter at last! from Jean-Baptiste, occupied with cares of all sorts
at the bedside of the sufferer. Antony fancying that the air of the
country might do him good, the Abbe Haranger, one of the canons of the
Church of Saint Germain l'Auxerrois, where he was in the habit of
hearing Mass, has lent him a house at Nogent-sur-Marne. There he
receives a few visitors. But in truth the places he once liked best,
the people, nay! the very friends, have become to him nothing less than
insupportable. Though he still dreams of change, and would fain try
his native air once more, he is at work constantly upon his art; but
solely by way of a teacher, instructing (with a kind of remorseful
diligence, it would seem) Jean-Baptiste, who will be heir to his
unfinished work, and take up many of his pictures where he has left
them. He seems now anxious [43] for one thing only, to give his old
"dismissed"