"So—a Moor, I should judge from his dark complexion. And you write such music? Haydn—I recollect the name; and I remember hearing, too, that you were not well paid for your labors, eh?"
"I have been very unfortunate, your highness—"
"Well, you shall have no reason to complain in my service. My secretary shall fix your appointments; and name whatever else you desire. All of your profession find me liberal. Now then, sir Moor, you may go; and let it be your first care to provide yourself with a new coat, a wig, and buckles and heels to your shoes. I will have you respectable in appearance as well as in talents; so let me have no more of shabby professors. And do your best, my little dusky, to recruit in flesh—it will add to the stature; and to relieve your olive with a shade of the ruddy. Such spindle masters would be a walking discredit to our larder, which is truly a spendthrift one."
So saying, with a laugh, the haughty nobleman dismissed his new dependent. The artist chafed not at the imperious tone of patronage; for he did not yet feel the superiority of his own vocation. It was the bondage-time of genius; the wings were not yet grown which were to bear his spirit up, when it brooded over a new world.
The life which Haydn led in the service of Prince Esterhazy, to which service he was permanently attached by Nicolas, the successor of Antoine, in the quality of chapel-master, was one so easy that it might have proved fatal to an artist more inclined to luxury and pleasure, or less devoted to his art. Now for the first time relieved from the care of the future, he was enabled to yield to the impulse of his genius, and create works which gradually extended his fame over all the countries of Europe.
II.
On the evening of a day in the beginning of April, 1809, all the lovers of art in Vienna were assembled in the theatre to witness the performance of the oratorio of The Creation. The entertainment had been given in honor of the composer of that noble work—the illustrious Haydn—by his numerous friends and admirers. He had been enticed from Gumpendorf, his retreat in the suburbs, the cottage surrounded by a little garden which he had purchased after his retirement from the Esterhazy service, and where he was spending the last years of his life. Three hundred musicians assisted at the performance. The audience rose en masse and greeted with rapturous applause the white-haired man, who, led forward by the most distinguished nobles in the city, was conducted to the place of honor. There, seated with princesses at his right hand, beauty smiling upon him, the centre of a circle of nobility, the observed and admired of all, the object of the acclamations of thousands—who would not have said that Haydn had reached the summit of human greatness, had more than realized the proudest visions of his youth? His serene countenance, his clear eye, his air of dignified self-possession, showed that prosperity had not overcome him, but that amid the smiles of fortune he had not forgotten the true excellence of man.
"I can see plainly," remarked one of Haydn's friends, whom we will call Manuel, "that he will write no more."
"He has done enough; and now we are ready for the farewell of Haydn," said another.
"The farewell?"