When such excellent people have enlivened our houses by their presence, have given us new impulses through their fresh spirits, and have made us feel the blessings of dispensing hospitality, their departure leaves an uncomfortable sense of vacancy and interruption, at least for the rest of the day, and especially if we are left to ourselves.  The latter case, at least, was not true with our friends in the palace.  Franziska’s parents and aunt soon followed the Mozarts.  Franziska herself, the Baron, and Max of course, remained.  Eugenie, with whom we are especially concerned, because she appreciated more deeply than the others the priceless experience she had had—­she, one would think, could not feel in the least unhappy or troubled.  Her pure happiness in the truly beloved man to whom she was now formally betrothed would drown all other considerations; rather, the most noble and lovely things which could move her heart must be mingled with that other happiness.  So would it have been, perhaps, if she could have lived only in the present, or in joyful retrospect.  But she had been moved by anxiety while Frau Mozart was telling her story, and the apprehension increased all the while that Mozart was playing, in spite of the ineffable charm beneath the mysterious horror of the music, and was brought to a climax by his own story of his night work.  She felt sure that this man’s energy would speedily and inevitably destroy him; that he could be but a fleeting apparition in this world, which was unable to appreciate the profusion of his gifts.

This thought, mingled with many others and with echoes of Don Juan, had surged through her troubled brain the night before, and it was almost daylight when she fell asleep.  Now, the three women had seated themselves in the garden with their work; the men bore them company, and when the conversation, as was natural, turned upon Mozart, Eugenie did not conceal her apprehensions.  No one shared them in the least, although the Baron understood her fully.  She tried to rid herself of the feeling, and her friends, particularly her uncle, brought to her mind the most positive and cheering proofs that she was wrong.  How gladly she heard them!  She was almost ready to believe that she had been foolishly alarmed.

Some moments afterward, as she passed through the large hall which had just been swept and put in order, where the half-drawn green damask curtains made a soft twilight, she stopped sadly before the piano.  It was like a dream, to think who had sat there but a few hours before.  She looked long and thoughtfully at the keys which he had touched last; then she softly closed the lid and took away the key, in jealous care lest some other hand should open it too soon.  As she went away, she happened to return to its place a book of songs; an old leaf fell out, the copy of a Bohemian folk-song, which Franziska, and she too, had sung long ago.  She took it up, not without emotion, for in her present mood the most natural occurrence might easily seem an oracle.  And the simple verses, as she read them through again, brought the hot tears to her eyes: