ther
questioned him and commended his work. But the lad seemed not greatly
pleased, and left untasted the glass of old Malaga which was offered to
him. His father will hear nothing of educating him as a painter. Yet
he is not ill-to-do, and has lately built himself a new stone house,
big and grey and cold. Their old plastered house with the black
timbers, in the Rue des Cardinaux, was prettier; dating from the time
of the Spaniards, and one of the oldest in Valenciennes.

October 1701.

Chiefly through the solicitations of my father, old Watteau has
consented to place Antony with a teacher of painting here. I meet him
betimes on the way to his lessons, as I return from Mass; for he still
works with the masons, but making the most of late and early hours, of
every moment of liberty. And then he has the feast-days, of which there
are so many in this old-fashioned place. Ah! such gifts as his, surely,
may once in a way make much industry seem worth while. He makes a
wonderful progress. And yet, far from being set-up, and too easily
pleased with what, after all, comes to him so easily, he has, my father
thinks, too little self-approval for ultimate success. He is apt, in
truth, to fall out too hastily with himself and what he produces. Yet
here also there is the "golden mean." Yes! I could fancy myself
offended by a sort of irony which sometimes crosses the half-melancholy
sweetness of manner habitual with him; only that as I can see, he
treats himself to the same quality.

October 1701.

Antony Watteau comes here often now. It is the instinct of a natural
fineness in him, to escape when he can from that blank stone house,
with so little to interest, and that homely old man and woman. The
rudeness of his home has turned his feeling for even the simpler graces
of life into a physical want, like hunger or thirst, which might come
to greed; and methinks he perhaps overvalues these things. Still, made
as he is, his hard fate in that rude place must needs touch one. And
then, he profits by the experience of my father, who has much knowledge
in matters of art beyond his own art of sculpture; and Antony is not
unwelcome to him. In these last rainy weeks especially, when he can't
sketch out of doors, when the wind only half dries the pavement before
another torrent comes, and people stay at home, and the only sound from
without is the creaking of a restless shutter on its hinges, or the
march across the Place of those wea