I must now proceed to answer your letter.  You can be under no further anxiety as to my health, for you must have ere this received three letters from me.  The first, containing the sad news of my mother’s death, was enclosed, my dear friend, to you.  You must forgive my silence on the subject, but my thoughts recur to it constantly.  You write that I should now think only of my father, tell him frankly all my thoughts, and place entire confidence in him.  How unhappy should I be if I required this injunction!  It was expedient that you should suggest it, but I am happy to say (and you will also be glad to hear it) that I do not need this advice.  In my last letter to my dear father, I wrote to him all that I myself know up to this time, assuring him that I would always keep him minutely informed of everything, and candidly tell him my intentions, as I place entire faith in him, being confident of his fatherly care, love, and goodness.  I feel assured that at a future day he will not deny me a request on which my whole happiness in life depends, and which (for he cannot expect anything else from me) will certainly be quite fair and reasonable.  My dear friend, do not let my father read this.  You know him; he would only fancy all kinds of things, and to no purpose.

Now for our Salzburg affair.  You, my dear friend, are well aware how I do hate Salzburg, not only on account of the injustice shown to my father and myself there, which was in itself enough to make us wish to forget such a place, and to blot it out wholly from our memory.  But do not let us refer to that, if we can contrive to live respectably there.  To live respectably and to live happily, are two very different things; but the latter I never could do short of witchcraft,—­it would indeed be supernatural if I did,—­so this is impossible, for in these days there are no longer any witches.  Well, happen what may, it will always be the greatest possible pleasure to me to embrace my dear father and sister, and the sooner the better.  Still I cannot deny that my joy would be twofold were this to be elsewhere, for I have far more hope of living happily anywhere else.  Perhaps you may misunderstand me, and think that Salzburg is on too small a scale for me.  If so, you are quite mistaken.  I have already written some of my reasons to my father.  In the mean time, let this one suffice, that Salzburg is no place for my talent.  In the first place, professional musicians are not held in much consideration; and, secondly, one hears nothing.  There is no theatre, no opera there; and if they really wished to have one, who is there to sing?  For the last five or six years the Salzburg orchestra has always been rich in what is useless and superfluous, but very poor in what is useful and indispensable; and such is the case at the present moment.  Those cruel French are the cause of the band there being without a Capellmeister. [Footnote:  The old Capellmeister, Lolli, had died a short time previously.]