Hasse then turned to Friedemann, and grasped his hand.
"Commend me to your father, Monsieur Bach," he said warmly. "Tell him he shall yet hear something good of Scarlatti's disciple."
There was a faltering in his tone as he spoke these last words, and turning away, he left the room. Friedemann sighed deeply as he looked after him, and pushed away his glass, which Scherbitz had just filled.
The merry company was again convulsed with the sallies of the intoxicated chamberlain; and loud applause, cries of "bravo!" and toast after toast urged him on. When he fell back, helplessly drunk, the young men pulled off his court dress, put on a dark one, carried him out, and gave him to the watch as a drunken vagabond to be taken to the guard-house. Then they laughed to think of his consternation at finding himself in the cold cell, on New Year's morning.
Midnight struck in the midst of this boisterous revelry; the last hour of the dying year. There was a wild storm without, and clamorous shouting and singing within. The revellers reeled homeward; young Bach, the only one whose gait was steady, though he had drunk as deeply and as madly as the rest.
When he rose on the following morning, he saw a letter on his table, in a well-known hand, which he quietly opened and read with deep emotion. Then he began to pace up and down the room, till the door was abruptly opened and Scherbitz came in, wishing him the compliments of the season. He read the letter Friedemann handed him in silence.
"A charming old gentleman is that good papa of yours," he said as he gave it back. "His heart is full of kindness. May his life be long and happy! But look not so woe-begone, mon ami! How is it possible for you to satisfy the claims of such exalted, old-fashioned virtue? The time will come when we, madcaps as we are, shall be pointed out as models of propriety for our juniors. Let the wheel of time roll on."
"To crush us in the dust!" moaned Friedemann.
"Look at me—a page forty years old! I have no fear of reverse as long as I serve my lord faithfully. I might have stood up heroically against the all-powerful minister, and I should have been hailed as one of her deliverers by my country; but I kept my place and pension, and remain a page in comfortable quarters."
"You are not the first whose life is a failure."