issueless circle till it expires within the close vaulting of that great
stone church:--human life may be like that bird too!

Antony Watteau returned to Paris yesterday. Yes!--Certainly, great heights
of achievement would seem to lie before him; access to regions whither one
may find it increasingly hard to follow him even in imagination, and
figure to one's self after what manner his life moves therein.


January 1709.

Antony Watteau has competed for what is called the Prix de Rome, desiring
greatly to profit by the grand establishment founded at Rome by Lewis the
Fourteenth, for the encouragement of French artists. He obtained only the
second place, but does not renounce his desire to make the journey to
Italy. Could I save enough by careful economies for that purpose? It might
be conveyed to him in some indirect way that would not offend.


February 1712.

We read, with much pleasure for all of us, in the Gazette to-day, among
other events of the world, that Antony Watteau had been elected to the
Academy of Painting under the new title of Peintre des Fetes Galantes,
and had been named also Peintre du Roi. My brother, Jean-Baptiste, ran
to tell the news to old Jean-Philippe and Michelle Watteau.

A new manner of painting! The old furniture of people's rooms must needs
be changed throughout, it would seem, to accord with this painting; or
rather, the painting is designed exclusively to suit one particular kind