It was now almost sunset, and the garden was cool and pleasant.  There the Countess invited the ladies to rest and refresh themselves, while the Count led the way to the billiard room, for Mozart was known to be fond of the game.

We will follow the ladies.

After they had walked about they ascended a little slope, half inclosed by a high vine-covered trellis.  From the hill they could look off into the fields, and down into the streets of the village.  The last rosy rays of sunlight shone in through the leaves.

“Could we not sit here for a little,” suggested the Countess, “if Madame Mozart would tell us about herself and her husband?”

Madame Mozart was willing enough, and her eager listeners drew their chairs close about her.

“I will tell you a story that you must know in order to understand a little plan of mine.  I wish 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.