of his (of more importance than its mere money
value, as insuring for the future the full play of his natural powers)
I can trace like the bloom of a flower upon him; and he has, now and
then, the gaieties which from time to time, surely, must refresh all
true artists, however hard-working and "painful."

July 1705.

The charm of all this--his physiognomy and manner of being--has touched
even my young brother, Jean-Baptiste. He is greatly taken with Antony,
clings to him almost too attentively, and will be nothing but a
painter, though my father would have trained him to follow his own
profession. It may do the child good. He needs the expansion of some
generous sympathy or sentiment in that close little soul of his, as I
have thought, watching sometimes how his small face and hands are moved
in sleep. A child of ten who cares only to save and possess, to hoard
his tiny savings! Yet he is not otherwise selfish, and loves us all
with a warm heart. Just now it is the moments of Antony's company he
counts, like a little miser. Well! that may save him perhaps from
developing a certain meanness of character I have sometimes feared for
him.

August 1705.

We returned home late this summer evening--Antony Watteau, my father
and sisters, young Jean-Baptiste, and myself--from an excursion to
Saint-Amand, in celebration of Antony's last day with us. After
visiting the great abbey-church and its range of chapels, with their
costly encumbrance of carved shrines and golden reliquaries and funeral
scutcheons in the coloured glass, half seen through a rich enclosure of
marble and brasswork, we supped at the little inn in the forest.
Antony, looking well in his new-fashioned, long-skirted coat, and
taller than he really is, made us bring our cream and wild strawberries
out of doors, ranging ourselves according to his judgment (for a hasty
sketch in that big pocket-book he carries) on the soft slope of one of
those fresh spaces in the wood, where the trees unclose a little, while
Jean-Baptiste and my youngest sister danced a minuet on the grass, to
the notes of some strolling lutanist who had found us out. He is
visibly cheerful at the thought of his return to Paris, and became for
a moment freer and more animated than I have ever yet seen him, as he
discoursed to us about the paintings of Peter Paul Rubens in the church
here. His words, as he spoke of them, seemed full of a kind of rich
sunset with some moving glory within it.