French painter of the 18th century Antoine Watteau painted paintings in which, behind the ease of the plots, behind the carelessness of elegant characters, the bitterness of the artist, who saw the fragility and doom of the world around him, is always palpable. In the talented, unconventionally written book by M.Yu. Herman, the story about the fate and art of the artist is interspersed with peculiar "digressions," in which, on the basis of memoiristics and other little-known materials, a broad picture of the social and cultural life of France of the "Watteau era" is given.