HAYDN'S STRUGGLE AND TRIUMPH.
I.
"Seventeen kreutzers for a morning's work!" exclaimed a pretty but slovenly-dressed young woman, standing at the door of an apartment in a mean-looking house in one of the narrow streets of Vienna, addressing a man of low stature and sallow complexion, who had just come in. "And the printers running after you ever since you went out! Profitless doings for you to spend your time! At eight, the singing-desk of the brothers De la Merci; at ten, Count de Haugwitz's chapel; grand mass at eleven; and all this toil for a few kreutzers!"
"What can I do?" said the weary, desponding man.
"Do! Give up this foolish business of music, and take to something that will enable you to live. Did not my father, a hair-dresser, give you shelter when you had only your garret and skylight, and had to lie in bed and write for want of coals? Had he not a right to expect you would dress his daughter as well as she had been used at home, and that she should have servants to wait on her, as in her father's house?"
"You should not reproach me, Nanny. Have I not worked till my health has given way? If fortune is inexorable—"
"Fortune! As if fortune did not always wait upon industry in a proper calling. Your patrons admire and applaud, but they will not pay; yet you will drudge away your life in this ungrateful occupation. I tell you, Joseph Haydn, music is not the thing!"
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. 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?"