lude visits to Paris and London. The
trio arrived in Paris in November, and were greatly befriended by their
countryman, Grimm, the encyclopaedist, secretary to the Duke of
Orleans. Leopold wrote home thus, about the help this powerful friend
had been to them: "He has done everything; he has introduced the matter
at court, and arranged the first concert. He, alone, paid me eighty
louis-d'ors, then sold three hundred and twenty tickets, and, moreover,
bore the expense of lighting with wax. We burnt more than sixty
candles. It was he who obtained permission for the concert, and now he
is getting up a second, for which a hundred tickets have already been
distributed. You see what one man can do, who possesses sense and a
kind heart. He is a native of Ratisbon, but has been more than fifteen
years in Paris, and knows how to guide everything in the right
direction, so that all must happen as he intends."

[Illustration: Mozart and Madame de Pompadour. From painting by V. de
Paredes.]

Little Wolfgang had played before Maria Theresa; now he performed
before her ally, Madame de Pompadour, then within a few months of her
end, for the all-powerful favourite of Louis XV. died in the following
April. Leopold Mozart, writing home to Salzburg, speaks thus of the
Pompadour; "She must have been very beautiful, for she is still comely.
She is tall and stately; stout, but well proportioned, with some
likeness to her Imperial Majesty about the eyes. She is proud, and has
a remarkable mind." Mozart's sister remembered in after days how she
placed little Wolfgang on the table before her, but pushed him aside
when he bent forward to kiss her, on which he indignantly asked: "Who
is this that does not want to kiss me? The empress kissed me." The
king's daughters were much more friendly, and, contrary to all
etiquette, kissed and played with the children, both in their own
apartments and in the public corridors.

As before at Vienna and afterward in London, the little Mozarts made a
great hit in Paris, and performed before the most distinguished
audiences. Grimm relates in his correspondence "a truly astonishing
instance of the boy's genius." Wolfgang accompanied a lady in an
Italian air without seeing the music, supplying the harmony for the
passage which was to follow from that which he had just heard. This
could not be done without some mistakes, but when the song was ended he
begged the lady to sing it again, played the