the wood, where the trees unclose a little, while Jean-Baptiste and my
youngest sister danced a minuet on the grass, to the notes of some
strolling lutanist who had found us out. He is visibly cheerful at the
thought of his return to Paris, and became for a moment freer and more
animated than I have ever yet seen him, as he discoursed to us about the
paintings of Peter Paul Rubens in the church here. His words, as he spoke
of them, seemed full of a kind of rich sunset with some moving glory within
it. Yet I like far better than any of these pictures of Rubens a work of
that old Dutch master, Peter Porbus, which hangs, though almost out of
sight indeed, in our church at home. The patron saints, simple, and
standing firmly on either side, present two homely old people to Our Lady
enthroned in the midst, with the look and attitude of one for whom, amid
her "glories" (depicted in dim little circular pictures, set in the
openings of a chaplet of pale flowers around her) all feelings are over,
except a great pitifulness. Her robe of shadowy blue suits my eyes better
far than the hot flesh-tints of the Medicean ladies of the great Peter Paul,
in spite of that amplitude and royal ease of action under their stiff court
costumes, at which Antony Watteau declares himself in dismay.


August 1705.

I am just returned from early Mass. I lingered long after the office was
ended, watching, pondering how in the world one could help a small bird
which had flown into the church but could find no way out again. I
suspect it will remain there, fluttering round and round distractedly,
far up under the arched roof till it dies exhausted. I seem to have heard
of a writer who likened man's life to a bird passing just once only, on
some winter night, from window to window, across a cheerfully-lighted hall.
The bird, taken captive by the ill-luck of a moment, re-tracing its