“What can I do?”
“Do? What would I do in your place? Give up this foolish business of music, and take to something that will enable you to live as well as a peasant, at least. There is my father, a hairdresser, did not he give you shelter when you had nothing but your garret and skylight?—when you had to lie in bed and write for want of coals to warm you? Yes, in spite of your boasted genius and the praises you received, you were forced to come to him for bread!”
“He gave me more, Nanny,” said her husband, meaningly.
“Yes—his daughter, who had refused half the gallants in Vienna—for whom half-a-dozen peruke-maker’s apprentices went mad. Yes—and had he not a right to expect you would dress her as well as she had been used at home, and that she should have servants to wait upon her as in her father’s house? A fine realizing of his hopes and schemes for his favorite child—this miserable lodging, with but a few sous a day to keep us from starving!”
“You should not reproach me, Nanny. Have I not worked incessantly till my health has given way? And if fortune is still inexorable——”
“Ah, there it is, fortune!—as if fortune did not always wait, like a handmaid, upon industry in a proper calling! Your patrons may admire and applaud, but they will not pay; and yet you will drudge away your life in this ungrateful occupation. I tell you, Joseph, music is not the thing.”
“Alas!” sighed Haydn, “I once dreamed of fame.”
“Fame—pshaw! And what were that worth if you had it? Would fame clothe you or change these wretched walls to a palace? Believe me for once, and give up these idle fancies.”
Here a knock was heard at the door, and the wife, with exclamations of impatience, flounced away. The unfortunate artist threw himself on a seat, and leaned his head on a table covered with notes of music—works of his own, begun at various times, which want of health, energy or spirits, had prevented him from completing. So entirely had he yielded himself to despondency, that he did not move, even when the door opened, till the sound of a well known voice close at his side startled him from his melancholy reverie.
“How now, Haydn, what is the matter, my boy?”