their
decease. The settle of carved oak which runs all round the wide nave is
my father's own work. The quiet spaciousness of the place is itself
like a meditation, an "act of recollection," and clears away the
confusions of the heart. I suppose the heavy droning of the carillon
had smothered the sound of his footsteps, for on my turning round, when
I supposed myself alone, Antony Watteau was standing near me. Constant
observer as he is of the lights and shadows of things, he visits places
of this kind at odd times. He has left Jean-Baptiste at work in Paris,
and will stay this time with the old people, not at our house; though
he has spent the better part of to-day in my father's workroom. He
hasn't yet put off, in spite of all his late intercourse with the great
world, his distant and preoccupied manner--a manner, it is true, the
same to every one. It is certainly not through pride in his success, as
some might fancy, for he was thus always. It is rather as if, with all
that success, life and its daily social routine were somewhat of a
burden to him.

April 1714.

At last we shall understand something of that new style of his-the
Watteau style--so much relished by the fine people at Paris. He has
taken it into his kind head to paint and decorate our chief salon--the
room with the three long windows, which occupies the first floor of the
house.

The room was a landmark, as we used to think, an inviolable milestone
and landmark, of old Valenciennes fashion--that sombre style, indulging
much in contrasts of black or deep brown with white, which the
Spaniards left behind them here. Doubtless their eyes had found its
shadows cool and pleasant, when they shut themselves in from the
cutting sunshine of their own country. But in our country, where we
must needs economise not the shade but the sun, its grandiosity weighs
a little on one's spirits. Well! the rough plaster we used to cover as
well as might be with morsels of old figured arras-work, is replaced by
dainty panelling of wood, with mimic columns, and a quite aerial
scrollwork around sunken spaces of a pale-rose stuff and certain oval
openings--two over the doors, opening on each side of the great couch
which faces the windows, one over the chimney-piece, and one above the
buffet which forms its vis-a-vis--four spaces in all, to be filled by
and by with "fantasies" of the Four Seasons, painted by his own hand.
He will send us from Paris arm-chairs of a new patt