“Or that, because you were fain to serve me like a lacquey from pure love, I rewarded you with flattering lies, eh?”
“Caro, you mistake me. I know you clearsighted and candid—yet I feel that I shall never justify your kind encouragement. I have toiled till youth is passing away in vain. I have no heart to bear up against the crushing hand of poverty—I succumb.”
“You have lost, then, your love of our art?”
“Not so. What your valuable lessons, dear master, have opened to me, forms the only bright spot in my life. Oh that I could pursue—could grasp it!”
“Why can you not?”
“I am chained!” cried Haydn, bitterly—and giving way to the anguish of his heart, he burst into tears.
Porpora shook his head, and was silent for a few moments. At length he resumed—“I must, I see, give you a little of my experience; and you shall see what has been the life of a prosperous artist. I was, you know, the pupil of Scarlatti; and from the time I felt myself capable of profiting by the lessons of that great master, devoted myself to travel. I was more fortunate than you, for my works procured me, almost at once, a wide-spread fame. I was called for not only in Venice, but in Vienna and London.”
“Ah, yours was a brilliant lot!” cried the young composer, looking up with kindling eyes.
“The Saxon court,” continued Porpora, “which has always granted the most liberal protection to musical art, offered me the direction of the chapel and of the theatre at Dresden. Even the princesses received my lessons—in short, my success was so great, that I awakened the jealousy of Hasse himself.”
“That was a greater triumph still,” observed Haydn, smiling.