es Galantes,
and had been named also Peintre du Roi. My brother, Jean-Baptiste, ran
to tell the news to old Jean-Philippe and Michelle Watteau.

A new manner of painting! The old furniture of people's rooms must
needs be changed throughout, it would seem, to accord with this
painting; or rather, the painting is designed exclusively to suit one
particular kind of apartment. A manner of painting greatly prized, as
we understand, by those Parisian judges who have had the best
opportunity of acquainting themselves with whatever is most enjoyable
in the arts:--such is the achievement of the young Watteau! He looks to
receive more orders for his work than he will be able to execute. He
will certainly relish--he, so elegant, so hungry for the colours of
life--a free intercourse with those wealthy lovers of the arts, M. de
Crozat, M. de Julienne, the Abbe de la Roque, the Count de Caylus, and
M. Gersaint, the famous dealer in pictures, who are so anxious to lodge
him in their fine hotels, and to have him of their company at their
country houses. Paris, we hear, has never been wealthier and more
luxurious than now: and the great ladies outbid each other to carry his
work upon their very fans. Those vast fortunes, however, seem to change
hands very rapidly. And Antony's new manner? I am unable even to divine
it--to conceive the trick and effect of it--at all. Only, something of
lightness and coquetry I discern there, at variance, methinks, with his
own singular gravity and even sadness of mien and mind, more answerable
to the stately apparelling of the age of Henry the Fourth, or of Lewis
the Thirteenth, in these old, sombre Spanish houses of ours.

March 1713.

We have all been very happy,--Jean-Baptiste as if in a delightful
dream. Antony Watteau, being consulted with regard to the lad's
training as a painter, has most generously offered to receive him for
his own pupil. My father, for some reason unknown to me, seemed to
hesitate the first; but Jean-Baptiste, whose enthusiasm for Antony
visibly refines and beautifies his whole nature, has won the necessary
permission, and this dear young brother will leave us to-morrow. Our
regrets and his, at his parting from us for the first time, overtook
our joy at his good fortune by surprise, at the last moment, as we were
about to bid each other good-night. For a while there had seemed to be
an uneasiness under our cheerful talk, as if each one present were
concealing something wi