clever as young Antony Watteau. We may think, however, that he is on the way
to his chosen end, for he returns not home; though, in truth, he tells those
poor old people very little of himself. The apprentices of the M. Metayer for
whom he works, labour all day long, each at a single part only,--coiffure, or
robe, or hand,--of the cheap pictures of religion or fantasy he exposes for
sale at a low price along the footways of the Pont Notre-Dame. Antony is
already the most skilful of them, and seems to have been promoted of late to
work on church pictures. I like the thought of that. He receives three livres
a week for his pains, and his soup daily.



May 1705.

Antony Watteau has parted from the dealer in pictures a bon marche and
works now with a painter of furniture pieces (those headpieces 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