| CHAPTER I. | A PRINCE OF COURT PAINTERS |
| CHAPTER II. | DENYS L'AUXERROIS |
| CHAPTER III. | SEBASTIAN VAN STORCK |
| CHAPTER IV. | DUKE CARL OF ROSENMOLD |
Valenciennes, September 1701.
They have been renovating my father's large workroom. That delightful,tumble-down old place has lost its moss-grown tiles and the greenweather-stains we have known all our lives on the high whitewashedwall, opposite which we sit, in the little sculptor's yard, for thecoolness, in summertime. Among old Watteau's workpeople came his son,"the genius," my father's godson and namesake, a dark-haired youth,whose large, unquiet eyes seemed perpetually wandering to the variousdrawings which lie exposed here. My father will have it that he is agenius indeed, and a painter born. We have had our September Fair inthe Grande Place, a wonderful stir of sound and colour in the wide,open space beneath our windows. And just where the crowd was busiestyoung Antony was found, hoisted into one of those empty niches of theold Hotel de Ville, sketching the scene to the life, but with a kind ofgrace—a marvellous tact of omission, as my father pointed out to us,in dealing with the vulgar reality seen from one's own window—whichhas made trite old Harlequin, Clown, and Columbine, seem like people insome fairyland; or like infinitely clever tragic actors, who, for thehumour of the thing, have put on motley for once, and are able to throwa world of serious innuendo into their burlesque looks, with a sort ofcomedy which shall be but tragedy seen from the other side. He broughthis sketch to our house to-day, and I was present when my fatherquestioned him and commended his work. But the lad seemed not greatlypleased, and left untasted the glass of old Malaga which was offered tohim. His father will hear nothing of educating him as a painter. Yethe is not ill-to-do, and has lately built himself a new stone house,big and grey and cold. Their old plastered house with the blacktimbers, in the Rue des Cardinaux, was prettier; dating from the timeof the Spaniards, and one of the oldest in Valenciennes.
October 1701.
Chiefly through the solicitations of my father, old Watteau hasconsented to place Antony with a teacher of painting here. I meet himbetimes on the way to his lessons, as I return from Mas