ozart was twenty-one and travelling on a
concert-tour with his mother, he met, at Augsburg, Marianne Mozart, the
daughter of his uncle, a book-binder. His experience at Augsburg with
certain impertinent snobs disgusted him with the place, and he wrote his
father that the meeting with his fair cousin was the only compensation
of visiting the town. He found her "pretty, intelligent, lovable,
clever, and gay," and, like him, "rather inclined to be satirical."

They struck up a correspondence which shows him in most hilarious moods.
His letters are full of that _possenhaften Jargon_ with which he
sprinkled his letters to his sister. He calls his cousin by the pet name
of Baesle, with which he rhymes "Haesle," a colloquial word for "rabbit."
His first letter to her overflows with nonsense and meaningless rhymes,
puns, and quibbles, such as:

"Ich hoffe, Sie werden auch meinen Brief--trief, welchen
ich Ihnen aus Mannheim geschrieben erhalten haben--schaben.
Desto besser, besser desto!"

Lady Wallace has made a translation which reproduces well the nonsense
if not literally the sense. This is a sample:

"My dear Coz-Buzz:--I have safely received your precious
epistle--thistle, and from it I perceive--achieve, that my
aunt--gaunt, and you--shoe, are quite well--bell. I have
to-day a letter--setter, from my papa--ah-ha, safe in my
hands--sands."

A week later he writes her a letter beginning:

"My dear niece, cousin, daughter! mother, sister, and wife!--Potz
Himmel! Croatians, demons, witches, hags, and cross batteries! Potz
Element! air, earth, fire and water! Europe, Asia, Africa, and America!
Jesuits, Augustines, Benedictines, Capucins, Minorites, Franciscans,
Dominicans, Carthusians, and Knights of the Cross! privateers, canons
regular and irregular, sluggards, rascals, scoundrels, imps, and
villains all! donkeys, buffaloes, oxen, fools, blockheads, numskulls,
and foxes! What means this? Four soldiers and three shoulder-belts! Such
a packet and no portrait!"

It seems that she had promised him her picture! She sends it later, and
it is still in the Mozart Museum, showing her, as Jahn declares, to have
a good-natured and cheerful face, and rather a stocky figure; he adds,
"Without being beautiful she seems right pleasing." It is certain that
in whatever butterfly humour Mozart regarded her, she took him and his
kisses and his flowery declarations seriously. Had he not said in this
very letter, "love me as I love you,