Olympus of the _Io Pæan_, the hoarse pipe and the goat-footed Gods, the
laughter of the _Cyclops_ of Euripides and the _Evohe_ of Ronsard, the
licentious triumphs, the ivy-crowned Joys;

"_Et la libre cadence
De leur danse._"

These gods have gone, and Rubens, who lives again in that palette of
light and rosy flesh, wanders bewildered in these _fêtes_, where the
riot of the senses is stilled,--animated caprices which seem to await
the crack of a whip to dissolve and disappear in the realm of fancy like
a mid-summer night's dream! It is Cythera; but it is Watteau's. It is
love, but it is a poetic love, a love that dreams and thinks; modern
love, with its aspirations and its crown of melancholy.

Yes, at the heart of this work of Watteau's, I do not know what slow and
vague harmony murmurs behind those laughing words; I do not know what
musical and sweetly contagious sorrow is diffused throughout these
gallant _fêtes_. Like the fascination of Venice, I do not know what
veiled and sighing poetry in low tones holds here the charmed spirit.
The man has passed across his work; and this work you come to regard as
the play and distraction of a suffering thought, like the playthings of
a sick child who is now dead....

But let us speak of that masterpiece of French masterpieces, that canvas
which has held a distinguished place on one of the walls of the _salon
carré_ for fifty years, _L'Embarquement de Cythère_.

Observe all that ground lightly coated with a transparent and golden
varnish, all that ground covered with rapid strokes of the brush lightly