est." A great sorrow came to
him here in the death of his mother. Owing to the great expense of
living in Paris, they had been compelled to live together in a small,
dark room, so cramped for space that there was not even room for the
indispensable piano. Here she was taken ill, and though for fourteen
days Wolfgang most devotedly attended to her wants, she died in his
arms. The letters in which he breaks the news to his father and sister
are full of the most beautiful tenderness and forgetfulness of his own
grief in solicitude for theirs. Things did not indeed prosper with him
in Paris; he tried to give lessons, but the ladies whom he taught paid
him very shabbily, and the labor of getting from one part of the city
to another to teach was so great that he found it difficult to give
the time he wished to composition.

Music in Paris, just then, was at a low ebb. Vapidly pretty Italian
operas were in fashion, and Piccinni was the favorite composer. It was
some years afterward that the great contest between the Piccinnists
and Gluckists culminated in the victory of the latter, though
"Alceste," had already been produced, and "Iphigenia" was soon to
follow. Mozart was a fervent admirer of Gluck, and the music of the
older master had evidently an important influence on that of the
younger and more gifted composer.

Once more his thoughts were turned to Salzburg, for two of the leading
musicians there having died, the Archbishop Hieronymus offered their
posts to the Mozarts, father and son, at a salary of a thousand
florins for the two. The father anxiously entreated his son to return
and accept this offer, mentioning as a further bait, that Aloysia
Weber would probably be engaged to sing in Salzburg. Much as Wolfgang
hated Salzburg, or rather the people living there, his love for his
father and sister prevailed over his aversion; and though with no
pleasure at all in the prospect of seeing the hateful archbishop
again, he set out from Paris, travelling to Salzburg in very leisurely
fashion via Strasbourg, Mannheim, and Munich. At Strasbourg he was
induced to give several concerts, but they were not pecuniary
successes, and he did not make by any one more than three louis d'or.
But how the artist peeps out in every line of the letters in which he
describes these! After saying how few were present, and how cold it
was, he proceeds: "But I soon warmed myself, to show the Strasbourg
gentlemen how little I cared, and played to