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.

I notice that our good-hearted but sometimes difficult friend said little
of our brother Jean-Baptiste, though he knows us so anxious on his
account--spoke only of his constant industry, cautiously, and not
altogether with satisfaction, as if the sight of it wearied him.


September 1714.

Will Antony ever accomplish that long-pondered journey to Italy? For his
own sake, I should be glad he might. Yet it seems desolately far, across
those great hills and plains. I remember how I formed a plan for providing
him with a sum sufficient for the purpose. But that he no longer needs.

With myself, how to get through time becomes sometimes the
question,--unavoidably; though it strikes me as a thing unspeakably sad
in a life so short as ours. The sullenness of a long wet day is yielding
just now to an outburst of watery sunset, which strikes from the far
horizon of this quiet world of ours, over fields and willow-woods, upon
the shifty weather-vanes and long-pointed windows of the tower on the
square--from which the Angelus is sounding-with a momentary promise of a