These letters alarmed the father exceedingly, so he wrote a long and very earnest letter to his son as follows:—­“The object of your journey was to assist your parents, and to contribute to your dear sister’s welfare, but, above all, that you might acquire honor and fame in the world, which you in some degree did in your boyhood; and now it rests entirely with you to raise yourself by degrees to one of the highest positions ever attained by any musician.  This is a duty you owe to a kind Providence in return for the remarkable talents with which He has gifted you; and it depends wholly on your own good sense and good conduct, whether you become a commonplace artist whom the world will forget, or a celebrated Capellmeister, of whom posterity will read hereafter in books,—­whether, infatuated with some pretty face, you one day breathe your last on a straw sack, your wife and children in a state of starvation, or, after a well-spent Christian life, die peacefully in honor and independence, and your family well provided for.”  He goes on to represent to him how little he has hitherto fulfilled the object of his journey, and, above all, the folly of wishing to place so young a girl on the Italian stage as a prima donna, both time and great training being previously required.  Moreover, it would be quite unworthy of him to wander about the world with strangers, and to compose at random merely for money.  “Get off to Paris without delay.  Take your place by the side of really great people.  Aut Caesar aut nihil.  The very idea of Paris should have guarded you from all passing fancies.”

To this Wolfgang replies:—­

94.

Mannheim, Feb. 19, 1778.

I always thought that you would disapprove of my journey with the Webers, but I never had any such intention—­I mean, under present circumstances.  I gave them my word of honor to write to you to that effect.  Herr Weber does not know how we stand, and I certainly shall tell it to no one.  I wish my position had been such that I had no cause to consider any one else, and that we were all independent; but in the intoxication of the moment I forgot the present impossibility of the affair, and also to tell you what I had done.  The reasons of my not being now in Paris must be evident to you from my last two letters.  If my mother had not first begun on the subject, I certainly would have gone with my friends; but when I saw that she did not like it, I began to dislike it also.  When people lose confidence in me, I am apt to lose confidence in myself.  The days when, standing on a stool, I sang Oragna fiaguta fa, [Footnote:  Words sounding like Italian, but devoid of meaning, for which he had invented a melody.  Nissen gives it in his Life of Mozart, p. 35.] and at the end kissed the tip of your nose, are indeed gone by; but still, have my reverence, love, and obedience towards yourself ever failed on that account?  I say no more.  As for your reproach about the little singer in Munich