"Oh!"
"A general music director, I mean. Let me build you an air-castle! That weakness I got from my mother."
"Build away! The higher the better!"
"No, my air-castles are very real ones! In a year from now they'll be reporting—"
"If the Pope to Gretchen comes a-courting!"
"Keep quiet, you ridiculous goose! I tell you by the first of next
September there will be no 'Imperial Court Composer' of the name of Wolf
Mozart to be found in Vienna."
"May the foxes bite you for that!"
"I hear already what our old friends are saying and gossiping about us."
"What, then?"
"Well, a little after nine o'clock one fine morning our old friend and admirer Frau Volkstett comes sailing at full speed across the Kahlmarkt. She has been away for three months. That famous visit to her brother-in-law in Saxony, that we have heard about every day, has at last come off. She returned yesterday, and cannot wait any longer to see her dear friend, the Colonel's wife. Upstairs she goes and knocks at the door, and does not wait for an answer. You may imagine the rejoicing and the embracing an both sides. 'Now dearest, best Frau Colonel,' she begins after the greetings are over, 'I have so many messages for you. Guess from whom? I didn't come straight from Stendal, but by way of Brandenburg.'