“A lovely, mischievous little girl!” answered Mozart, laughing, “who calls herself Lena, and shall give me a kiss!” and turning round, he caught her in his arms, and took his revenge.
“Is your wife with you this time?” asked Madame Doles.
“No, I have not brought her with me,” answered Mozart, while he assisted Doles to arrange his dress. “She is not fully recovered from her last winter’s illness. Ah! how often she wishes for you, good mother; you would hardly believe we could feel so lonely and desolate in so large a city as Vienna!”
“Why do you not come and live here?” asked Lena impatiently, “where we all love you so much. We would never let you feel lonely or desolate. Your wife should like us all, and I would keep your boys with me. Be advised, Mozart, and come to live in Leipzig.”
“You are always couleur de rose, Lena,” said the composer, laughing; “but I should find it harder to get away than you imagine. In the first place I could not leave my Emperor, and in the next, as far as art is concerned, one can do in Vienna as he cannot well elsewhere.”
“Hem,” muttered Freigang, “we are not badly off as to music, here.”
“By no means,” said Mozart, earnestly, “and most excellent music. Your church music and your concerts are unrivalled—may I never live to see the day when they shall be talked of as a thing that is past! But you know, father,” he turned to Doles, “while your artists and connoisseurs stand among the first, as regards the public and the popular taste, you cannot compete even with the Viennese, much less with mine excellent friends of Prague and Munich. I hope and trust these matters will change for the better in time; just at present, I at least find it my interest to prefer Vienna, Munich, or Prague.”
“It is as you say, dear Wolfgang,” replied Doles; “they call our Leipzig a little Paris; but we must plead guilty to some northern coldness and caution, and this excessive prudence it is which hinders us from following immediately in the new path you have opened for us.”
“And yet I have reason to quarrel with the Viennese,” interrupted Mozart. “My Giovanni can testify to that.”
“Shall I confess to you,” said Doles, “that as much as I have heard of this opera, though it surprises, astonishes, charms me, it does not, to say the truth, quite satisfy me?”