E-text Editor: Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D. Electronic Version 1.0 / Date10-12-01
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Valenciennes, September 1701.
[5] They have been renovating my father's large workroom. Thatdelightful, tumble-down old place has lost its moss-grown tiles and thegreen weather-stains we have known all our lives on the highwhitewashed wall, opposite which we sit, in the little sculptor's yard,for the coolness, in summertime. Among old Watteau's work-people camehis son, "the genius," my father's godson and namesake, a dark-hairedyouth, whose large, unquiet eyes seemed perpetually wandering to thevarious drawings which lie exposed here. My father will have it thathe is a genius indeed, and a painter born. We have had our SeptemberFair in the Grande Place, a wonderful stir of sound and colour in thewide, open space beneath our windows. And just where the crowd wasbusiest young Antony was found, hoisted into one of those empty nichesof the old Hôtel de Ville, sketching the scene to the life, but with a[6] kind of grace—a marvellous tact of omission, as my father pointedout to us, in dealing with the vulgar reality seen from one's ownwindow—which has made