for
doors and the like, now in fashion) who is also concierge of the Palace
of the Luxembourg. Antony is actually lodged somewhere in that grand
place, which contains the king's collection of the Italian pictures he
would so willingly copy. Its gardens also are magnificent, with
something, as we understand from him, altogether of a novel kind in
their disposition and embellishment. Ah! how I delight myself, in fancy
at least, in those beautiful gardens, freer and trimmed less stiffly
than those of other royal houses. Methinks I see him there, when his
long summer-day's work is over, enjoying the cool shade of the stately,
broad-foliaged trees, each of which is a great courtier, though it has
its way almost as if it belonged to that open and unbuilt country
beyond, over which the sun is sinking.

His thoughts, however, in the midst of all this, are not wholly away
from home, if I may judge by the subject of a picture he hopes to sell
for as much as sixty livres--Un Depart de Troupes, Soldiers
Departing--one of those scenes of military life one can study so well
here at Valenciennes.

June 1705.

Young Watteau has returned home--proof, with a character so independent
as his, that things have gone well with him; and (it is agreed!) stays
with us, instead of in the stone-mason's house. The old people suppose
he comes to us for the sake of my father's instruction. French people
as we are become, we are still old Flemish, if not at heart, yet on the
surface. Even in French Flanders, at Douai and Saint Omer, as I
understand, in the churches and in people's houses, as may be seen from
the very streets, there is noticeable a minute and scrupulous air of
care-taking and neatness. Antony Watteau remarks this more than ever on
returning to Valenciennes, and savours greatly, after his lodging in
Paris, our Flemish cleanliness, lover as he is of distinction and
elegance. Those worldly graces he seemed when a young lad to hunger and
thirst for, as though truly the mere adornments of life were its
necessaries, he already takes as if he had been always used to them.
And there is something noble--shall I say?--in his half-disdainful way
of serving himself with what he still, as I think, secretly values
over-much. There is an air of seemly thought--le bel serieux--about
him, which makes me think of one of those grave old Dutch statesmen in
their youth, such as that famous William the Silent. And yet the effect
of this first success