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