them a long time for my
own amusement, giving a concerto more than I had promised, and at the
close extemporizing. It is now over, but at all events I gained honor
and fame."

At Munich a great shock awaited him. He visited the Webers, and being
in mourning for his mother, wore, after the French fashion, a red coat
with black buttons. When he appeared, Aloysia hardly seemed to
recognize him, and her coldness was so marked, that Mozart quietly
seated himself at the piano, and sang in a loud voice, "Ich lass das
Maedchen gern das mich nicht will" (I gladly give up the girl who
slights me). It was all over, and he had to bear the loss of the
fickle girl as best he might. There is a significant line in one of
his letters at this time to his father: "In my whole life I never
wrote worse than I do to-day, but I really am unfit for anything; my
heart is so full of tears." After two years' absence he returned home
to Salzburg, where he was warmly welcomed back. Here he remained for a
little while, and wrote his first serious opera, "Idomeneo," to the
text of an Abbe Varesco, a Salzburger. This opera Beethoven thought
the finest of all that Mozart wrote. It was brought out at Munich in
January, 1781, and was brilliantly successful. In the March following,
an order was received from the archbishop to follow him to Vienna,
where he wished to appear with all the full pomp and brilliant retinue
of a prince of the church; and as one of this retinue Mozart had to
follow him, little thinking at the time that he should never return to
Salzburg, but that Vienna henceforth was to be his home.

In Vienna he found that he had to live in the archbishop's house, and
was looked upon there as one of the ordinary servants. He says, "We
dine at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, unluckily rather too early an
hour for me. Our party consists of the two valets, the comptroller,
Herr Zetti, the confectioner, the two cooks, Cecarilli, Brunetti (two
singers), and my insignificant self. N. B.--The two valets sit at the
head of the table. I have, at all events, the honor to be placed above
the cooks; I almost believe I am back to Salzburg."

Mozart was a true gentleman, with no foolish false pride, but with the
honorable self-respect that every gentleman must possess, and it was
very galling to him to have to suffer such odious treatment from the
mean-spirited archbishop. Indeed, it was only for his father's sake
that he submitted to the continued contu