For nine months the affair had thus dragged on, during which time L. Mozart had been living with his family at Vienna almost entirely on the proceeds of their previous tour. His receipts at Vienna could not but be insignificant, and the salary which he drew at Salzburg as professor of the violin in the Royal Chapel, and leader of the orchestra, was withdrawn in March of this year with the observation that he might remain away as long as he chose, but that he would not be paid during his absence.
He was too proud to use the influence of his patron, Count Schrattenbach, brother to the Archbishop, in soliciting the continuance of a salary which, "in the firm opinion of most of the court officials," he did not deserve.
But he could no longer count with certainty on the future security of his position at Salzburg, and a rumour even reached him that this was imperilled by the gossip which represented his gains in Vienna as enormous, and fixed on 2,000 gulden as the sum which had been paid for Wolfgang's opera.
L. Mozart sought to justify himself with the Archbishop by a reference to Affligio's want of faith, which it had been impossible to foresee; and by declaring that had the work been an opera seria instead of an opera buffa, requiring all the strength of the Viennese company, he would not have hesitated to shake the dust of Vienna from his feet, and lay his son's first important composition at the feet of his rightful and gracious lord. The honour of the Archbishop himself Mozart considered to be concerned, that artists employed THE FIRST OPERA IN VIENNA. and recommended by him should not be treated as "charlatans, liars, and impostors, who go abroad with his permission to throw dust in people's eyes like common conjurors"; and the Archbishop was implored to undertake Wolfgang's cause as identical with his own against people, who "because they sniff the air of the town where the Emperor happens to reside, look with disdain on those who serve foreign princes, and speak disrespectfully of the foreign princes themselves."
Nay, he calls upon him as a Christian to convince the unbelievers that the Almighty has worked a miracle in the birth of this prodigy at Salzburg:—
If ever I considered it my duty to convince the world of this miracle I do so now, at a time when every effort is made to bring miracles into disrepute and ridicule. What greater joy and triumph could I enjoy than to hear the astonished exclamation of a follower of Voltaire (Grimm): Now for once in my life I have seen a miracle; it is the first. But because this marvel is too patent and too open to be denied, every effort is made to suppress it, and to deprive the Lord of the glory due to Him. There is an idea that in a few years the wonder will cease and will fall back into the natural. So it is to be hidden away from the eyes of the world; for what could manifest it more openly than a public performance in a large and populous city?
This tone was undoubtedly adopted as an appeal to the Archbishop's bigoted piety.
In spite of all discouragements, L. Mozart never swerved from his main object. He had an immovable faith in the Providence which had "so often and so evidently urged him on or held him back, and always led him in the right way." Just as firm was his confidence in the artistic gifts of his son, for whose glorious future he considered it his mission to prepare the way. His conviction that the opera in Vienna would be the pioneer on the road to Italy made him ready to sacrifice to it even his official position in Salzburg:—
I reckon upon this as a means of extorting permission for the journey to Italy, a journey which, all things considered, cannot be long delayed, and for which the Emperor himself has given me every possible assistance in the imperial towns, and in Florence and Naples. Failing FORTITUDE OF L. MOZART. this, we must pine at Salzburg in the vain hope of better fortune, until I shall have grown too old to make the journey at all, and until Wolfgang has grown up, and his performances are deprived of everything marvellous. Can it be that the first step of this opera in Vienna shall have been made in vain, and that my son is not to advance with rapid strides along the path so plainly marked out for him?
However bitterly he felt that ill-will and disappointment pursued him in Vienna as they had never done abroad, and that his opponents were Germans seeking to oppress a German, whom foreigners had treated with justice and liberality, yet intrigues and slanders never deprived him of patience and self-command:—