of my life. I bury myself in that.

February 1715.

If I understand anything of these matters, Antony Watteau paints that
delicate life of Paris so excellently, with so much spirit, partly
[27] because, after all, he looks down upon it or despises it. To
persuade myself of that, is my womanly satisfaction for his
preference--his apparent preference--for a world so different from
mine. Those coquetries, those vain and perishable graces, can be
rendered so perfectly, only through an intimate understanding of
them. For him, to understand must be to despise them; while (I think
I know why) he nevertheless undergoes their fascination. Hence that
discontent with himself, which keeps pace with his fame. It would
have been better for him--he would have enjoyed a purer and more real
happiness--had he remained here, obscure; as it might have been
better for me!

It is altogether different with Jean-Baptiste. He approaches that
life, and all its pretty nothingness, from a level no higher than its
own; and beginning just where Antony Watteau leaves off in disdain,
produces a solid and veritable likeness of it and of its ways.

March 1715.

There are points in his painting (I apprehend this through his own
persistently modest observations) at which he works out his purpose
more excellently than Watteau; of whom he has trusted himself to
speak at last, with a wonderful self-effacement, pointing out in each
of his pictures, for the rest so just and true, how [28] Antony would