“‘What!  Not through Berlin!  You haven’t been with the Mozarts?’ ’Yes, ten heavenly days!’ ’Oh, my dear, good Frau General, tell me all about them!  How are our dear people?  Do they like Berlin as well as ever?  I can hardly imagine Mozart living in Berlin!  How does he act?  How does he look?’ ’Mozart!  You should see him!  This summer the King sent him to Karlsbad.  When would that have occurred to his dear Emperor Joseph?  They had but just returned when I arrived.  He is fairly radiant with health and good spirits, as sound and solid and lively as quicksilver, with happiness and comfort beaming from his countenance.’”

And then the speaker began to paint in the brightest colors the glories of the new position.  From their dwelling on Unter den Linden, from their garden and country-house to the brilliant scenes of public activity and the smaller circle of the court—­where he was to play accompaniments for the Queen—­all were vividly described.  She recited, with the greatest ease, whole conversations, and the most delightful anecdotes.  Indeed she seemed more familiar with Berlin, Potsdam, and Sans Souci than with the palace at Schoenbrunn and the Emperor Joseph’s castle.  She was, moreover, cunning enough to depict our hero with many new domestic virtues which had developed on the firm ground of the Berlin life, and among which Frau Volkstett had perceived (as a most remarkable phenomenon and a proof that extremes sometimes meet) the disposition of a veritable little miser—­and it made him altogether most charming.

“’Yes, think of it!  He is sure of his three thousand thalers, and for what?  For directing a chamber concert once a week, and the opera twice.  Ah, Frau Colonel, I have seen him, our dear, precious little man, in the midst of his excellent orchestra who adore him!  I sat with Frau Mozart in her box almost opposite the King’s box.  And what was on the posters, do you think?  Look, please!  I brought it for you, wrapped around a little souvenir from the Mozarts and myself.  Look, read it, printed in letters a yard long!’ ‘Heaven forbid!  Not Tarare!’ ’Yes!  What cannot one live to see!  Two years ago, when Mozart wrote Don Juan, and the wretched, malicious, yellow, old Salieri was preparing to repeat in Vienna the triumph which he had won with his piece, in Paris, and to show our good plain public, contented with Cosa rara, a hawk or two; while he and his arch-accomplice were plotting to present Don Juan just as they had presented Figaro, mutilated, ruined, I vowed that if the infamous Tarare was ever given, nothing should hire me to go to see it.  And I kept my word.  When everybody else ran to hear it—­you too, Frau Colonel—­I sat by my fire with my cat in my lap, and ate my supper.  Several times after that, too.  But now imagine! Tarare on the Berlin stage, the work of his deadly foe, conducted by Mozart himself!’ ‘You must certainly go,’ he said, ’if it is only to be able to say in Vienna whether I had a hair clipped from Absalom’s head.  I wish he were here himself!  The jealous old sheep should see that I do not need to bungle another person’s composition in order to show off my own.’”