ress him. The formal
pronoun _sie_ could hardly be used to a child; _du_, on the other
hand, implied a familiarity which might be resented by so celebrated
an artist; the gentleman, therefore, took refuge in _wir_, and thus
began: 'So _we_ have been in France and England,' '_we_ have been
introduced at Court'; '_we_ have been honoured'; when Wolfgang
interrupted him hastily. 'And yet, sir, I do not remember to have seen
you anywhere but in Salzburg!'

* * * * *

We must now return to the point at which we left our hero in his room
in the Archbishop's palace. The little musician realises that upon his
shoulders rests the burden of justifying to the Archbishop his
father's expressed belief in his powers, and love and gratitude
whisper to him that he cannot do too much in striving to uphold the
judgment of his beloved parent. His gratitude to his father was only
what might have been looked for in one so naturally thoughtful for
others. Leopold Mozart had, indeed, made great sacrifices for his
children, and he was prepared to go to even greater lengths of
self-denial in order to procure for them a good education, and to
found a musical career for the son in whose God-sent gifts he placed
the most implicit faith. 'I offer my children to my country,' he wrote
to a friend at this time. 'If it will have none of them, that is not
my fault, and will be my country's loss.'

And so, prompted by love and gratitude, Wolfgang works on until at
last the long task is finished, and the composer lays down his pen
with a sigh of relief. 'What will the Archbishop think of the work?
Will he laugh at it, and tell the father that he is mistaken in
believing that his son can write good music? Would this week of toil
be thrown away, and the sheets be cast into the fire?'

Such are the thoughts of the child-musician as he glances anxiously
through the manuscript. 'Yet, no; it has some good points--as a
musician he is sure of that--and surely his Grace will not fail to
observe those good points.'

Mozart's fears were groundless. When the old Archbishop came to
inspect the work, his face showed the pleasure and astonishment which
he felt. Boyish the workmanship may have been, yet there was nothing
of boyishness about the music itself. Wolfgang had taken the Italian
oratorio as his model, and the result showed how completely he had
mastered its forms. Such was the verdict which the connoisseurs passed
upon the w