th an effort; and it was Jean-Baptiste himself
who gave way at last. And then we sat down again, still together, and
allowed free play to what was in our hearts, almost till morning, my
sisters weeping much. I know better how to control myself. In a few
days that delightful new life will have begun for him: and I have made
him promise to write often to us. With how small a part of my whole
life shall I be really living at Valenciennes!

January 1714.

Jean-Philippe Watteau has received a letter from his son to-day. Old
Michelle Watteau, whose sight is failing, though she still works (half
by touch, indeed) at her pillow-lace, was glad to hear me read the
letter aloud more than once. It recounts--how modestly, and almost as a
matter of course!--his late successes. And yet!--does he, in writing to
these old people, purposely underrate his great good fortune and
seeming happiness, not to shock them too much by the contrast between
the delicate enjoyments of the life he now leads among the wealthy and
refined, and that bald existence of theirs in his old home? A life,
agitated, exigent, unsatisfying! That is what this letter really
discloses, below so attractive a surface. As his gift expands so does
that incurable restlessness one supposed but the humour natural to a
promising youth who had still everything to do. And now the only
realised enjoyment he has of all this might seem to be the thought of
the independence it has purchased him, so that he can escape from one
lodging-place to another, just as it may please him. He has already
deserted, somewhat incontinently, more than one of those fine houses,
the liberal air of which he used so greatly to affect, and which have
so readily received him. Has he failed truly to grasp the fact of his
great success and the rewards that lie before him? At all events, he
seems, after all, not greatly to value that dainty world he is now
privileged to enter, and has certainly but little relish for his own
works--those works which I for one so thirst to see.

March 1714.

We were all--Jean-Philippe, Michelle Watteau, and ourselves--half in
expectation of a visit from Antony; and to-day, quite suddenly, he is
with us. I was lingering after early Mass this morning in the church of
Saint Vaast. It is good for me to be there. Our people lie under one of
the great marble slabs before the jube, some of the memorial brass
balusters of which are engraved with their names and the dates of