, when Mozart exclaimed: "How many woods
we have passed every day of our journey, and I hardly noticed them, much
less thought of going into them! Postilion, stop and let your horses
rest a bit, while we get some of those blue-bells yonder in the shade!"

As they rose to leave the coach they became aware of a slight accident
for which the master had to take the blame. Through his carelessness a
bottle of choice perfume had lost its cork, and its contents had run,
unperceived, over clothing and carriage cushions. "I might have known
it," lamented Frau Mozart, "I have smelled it this long while! Oh dear!
A whole bottle of real 'Rosee d'Aurore!' I was as careful of it as if it
had been gold!"

"Never mind, little goose," was Mozart's comforting answer. "This was
the only way that your sacred smelling-stuff would do us any good. The
air was like an oven here, and all your fanning made it no cooler. But
presently the carriage was comfortable--you said it was because I poured
a couple of drops on my _jabot_--and we could talk and enjoy our journey
instead of hanging our heads like sheep in a butcher's cart. It will
last all the rest of the way. Come now, let us stick our two Vienna
noses into this green wilderness!"

They climbed the bank arm-in-arm, and strolled into the shade of the
pines, which grew deeper and deeper, till only here and there a stray
sunbeam lighted up the green mossy carpet. So cool was the air that
Mozart soon had to put on the coat, which, but for his prudent wife, he
would have left behind.

Presently he stopped and looked up through the rows of lofty
tree-trunks. "How beautiful!" he cried. "It is like being
in church! This is a real wood, a whole family of trees! No human
hand planted them, but they seem to have come and stood there just
because it is pleasant to live and grow in company. To think that I have
traveled half over Europe, have seen the Alps and the ocean, and yet,
happening to come into an ordinary Bohemian pine-woods, I am astonished
that such a thing actually exists; not as a poetic fiction like the
nymphs and fauns, but really living, drawn out of the earth by moisture
and sunshine! Imagine the deer, with his wonderful antlers, at home
here, and the mischievous squirrel, the wood-cock, and the jay!" He
stooped and picked a mushroom, praised its deep red color and delicate
white lines, and put a handful of cones into his pocket.

"Any one would think that you had never walked a do