sh to give to the Baroness-to-be a souvenir of
a very unusual kind. It is no article of luxury or of fashion but it is
interesting solely because of its history."

"What can it be, Eugenie?" asked Franziska. "Perhaps the ink-bottle of
some famous man." "Not a bad guess. You shall see the treasure within
an hour; it is in my trunk. Now for the story and with your permission
it shall begin back a year or more.

"The winter before last, Mozart's health caused me much anxiety, on
account of his increasing nervousness and despondency. Although he was
now and then in unnaturally high spirits when in company, yet at home he
was generally silent and depressed, or sighing and ailing. The physician
recommended dieting and exercise in the country. But his patient paid
little heed to the good advice; it was not easy to follow a prescription
which took so much time and was so directly contrary to all his plans
and habits. Then the doctor frightened him with a long lecture on
breathing, the human blood, corpuscles, phlogiston, and such unheard-of
things; there were dissertations on Nature and her purposes in eating,
drinking, and digestion--a subject of which Mozart was, till then, as
ignorant as a five-year-old child.

"The lesson made a distinct impression. For the doctor had hardly been
gone a half hour when I found my husband, deep in thought but of a
cheerful countenance, sitting in his room and examining a walking-stick
which he had ferreted out of a closet full of old things. I supposed
that he had entirely forgotten it. It was a handsome stick, with a large
head of lapis lazuli, and had belonged to my father. But no one had ever
before seen a cane in Mozart's hand, and I had to laugh at him.

"'You see,' he cried, 'I have surrendered myself to my cure, with all
its appurtenances. I will drink the water, and take exercise every day
in the open air, with this stick as my companion. I have been thinking
about it; there is our neighbor, the privy-councilor, who cannot even
cross the street to visit his best friend without his cane; tradesmen
and officers, chancellors and shop-keepers, when they go with their
families on Sunday for a stroll in the country, carry each one his
trusty cane. And I have noticed how in the Stephansplatz, a quarter of
an hour before church or court, the worthy citizens stand talking in
groups and leaning on their stout sticks, which, one can see, are the
firm supports of their industry, order, and tra