July 1705.

The charm of all this--his physiognomy and manner of being--has touched
even my young brother, Jean-Baptiste. He is greatly taken with Antony,
clings to him almost too attentively, and will be nothing but a painter,
though my father would have trained him to follow his own profession. It
may do the child good. He needs the expansion of some generous sympathy or
sentiment in that close little soul of his, as I have thought, watching
sometimes how his small face and hands are moved in sleep. A child of ten
who cares only to save and possess, to hoard his tiny savings! Yet he is
not otherwise selfish, and loves us all with a warm heart. Just now it is
the moments of Antony's company he counts, like a little miser. Well! that
may save him perhaps from developing a certain meanness of character I
have sometimes feared for him.


August 1705.

We returned home late this summer evening--Antony Watteau, my father and
sisters, young Jean-Baptiste, and myself--from an excursion to Saint-Amand,
in celebration of Antony's last day with us. After visiting the great
abbey-church and its range of chapels, with their costly encumbrance of
carved shrines and golden reliquaries and funeral scutcheons in the
coloured glass, half seen through a rich enclosure of marble and
brasswork, we supped at the little inn in the forest. Antony, looking well
in his new-fashioned, long-skirted coat, and taller than he really is,
made us bring our cream and wild strawberries out of doors, ranging
ourselves according to his judgment (for a hasty sketch in that big
pocket-book he carries) on the soft slope of one of those fresh spaces in