d he, "they are going to wander gayly about the
world, to play comedy wherever they may be, without cares and
without tears!"--Watteau, with his twelve-year-old eyes, saw
only the fair side of life. He did not guess, be it understood,
that beneath every smile of Margot there was a stifled tear.
Watteau seems to have always seen with the same eyes; his
glance, diverted by the expression and the color, did not
descend as far down as the soul. It was somewhat the fault of
his times. What had he to do while painting queens of comedy,
or dryads of the opera, with the heart, tears, or divine
sentiment?

"After the strollers had departed, he sketched on the margins
of the 'Lives of the Saints,' the profile of Gilles, a gaping
clown, or some grotesque scene from the booth. As he often shut
himself up in his room with this book, his father, having
frequently surprised him in a dreamy and melancholy mood,
imagined that he was becoming religious. He, however, soon
discovered that Watteau's attachment to the folio was on
account of the margin, and not of the text. He carried the book
to a painter in the city. This painter, bad as he was, was
struck with the original grace of certain of Watteau's figures,
and solicited the honor of being his master. In the studio of
this worthy man, Watteau did not unlearn all that he had
acquired, although he painted for pedlers, male and female
saints by the dozen. From this studio he passed to another,
which was more profane and more to his taste. Mythology was the
great book of the place. Instead of St. Peter, with his eternal
keys, or the Magdalen, with her infinite tears, he found a
dance of fauns and naiads, Venus, issuing from the waves, or
from the net of Vulcan. Watteau bowed amorously before the gods
and demigods of Olympus; he had found the gate to his Eden. He
progressed daily, thanks to the profane gods, in the religion
of art. He was already seen to grow pale under that love of
beauty and of glory which swallows up all other loves. On his
return from a journey to Antwerp, his friends were astonished
at the enthusiasm with which he spoke of the wonders of art. He
had beheld the masterpieces of Rubens and Vandyke, the
ineffable grace of Murillo's _Virgins_, the
ingenuously-grotesque pieces of Tenie