He has completed the ovals:--The Four Seasons. Oh! the summerlike grace, the freedom and softness, of the "Summer"--a hayfield such as we visited to-day, but boundless, and with touches of level Italian architecture in the hot, white, elusive distance, and wreaths of flowers, fairy hayrakes and the like, suspended from tree to tree, with that wonderful lightness which is one of the charms of his [23] work. I can understand through this, at last, what it is he enjoys, what he selects by preference, from all that various world we pass our lives in. I am struck by the purity of the room he has re-fashioned for us--a sort of moral purity; yet, in the forms and colours of things. Is the actual life of Paris, to which he will soon return, equally pure, that it relishes this kind of thing so strongly? Only, methinks 'tis a pity to incorporate so much of his work, of himself, with objects of use, which must perish by use, or disappear, like our own old furniture, with mere change of fashion. July 1714. On the last day of Antony Watteau's visit we made a party to Cambrai. We entered the cathedral church: it was the hour of Vespers, and it happened that Monseigneur le Prince de Cambrai, the author of Telemaque, was in his place in the choir. He appears to be of great age, assists but rarely at the offices of religion, and is never to be seen in Paris; and Antony had much desired to behold him. Certainly it was worth while to have come so far only to see him, and hear him give his pontifical blessing, in a voice feeble but of infinite sweetness, and with an inexpressibly graceful movement of the hands. A veritable grand seigneur! His refined old age, the impress of genius and [24] honours, even his disappointments, concur with natural graces to make him seem too distinguished (a fitter word fails me) for this world. Omnia vanitas! he seems to say, yet with a profound resignation, which makes the things we are most of us so fondly occupied with look petty enough. Omnia vanitas! Is that indeed the proper comment on our lives, coming, as it does in this case, from one who might have made his own all that life has to bestow? Yet he was never to be seen at court, and has lived here almost as an exile. Was our "Great King Lewis" jealous of a true grand seigneur or grand monarque by natural gift and the favour of heaven, that he could not endure his presence? July 1714. My own portrait remains unfinished at his sudden departure. I sat for it in a walking-dress, made under his direction--a gown of a peculiar silken stuff, falling into an abundance of small folds, giving me "a certain air of piquancy" which pleases him, but is far enough from my true self. My old Flemish faille, which I shall always wear, suits me better.