When only five years of age he wrote some music in his _Uebungsbuch_ or Exercise-book, which is yet to be seen in the Mozarteum[2] in Salzburg; also some little minuets; and, on one occasion, his father and the friend of the family mentioned above, surprised him engaged on the composition of a concerto so difficult that no one in the world could have played it. His ear was so acute, and his memory for music so good from the time he was a child, that once when playing his little violin, he remembered that the _Buttergeige_, the “butter-violin,” so-called from the extreme smoothness of its tones, was tuned one-eighth of a tone lower than his own. On account of this great acuteness of hearing, he could not, at that age, bear the sound of the trumpet; and when notwithstanding his father once put his endurance of it to the test, he was taken with violent spasms. His readiness and skill in music soon became so great that he was able to play almost everything at sight. His little sister also had made very extraordinary progress in music at a very early age, and the father in 1762, when the children were respectively six and ten years of age, began to travel with them, to show, as he said, these “wonders of God” to the world. The first place they went to was Munich, then as now the real capital of Southern Germany, and after that to Vienna. Maria Theresa and her consort were very fond of music. They received the children with genuine German cordiality, and little Wolfgang without any more ado, leaped into the lap of the Empress and kissed her; just as he had told the unfortunate Marie Antoinette, who had helped him from the slippery floor: “You are good and I’ll marry you.” The youngest son of Maria Theresa, the handsome and amiable grand-duke, Maximilian, was of the same age as young Mozart, and always remained his friend, as he was, subsequently, the patron of Beethoven. The picture of Mozart and his little sister dressed in the clothes of the imperial children hangs on the walls of the Mozarteum; his animated eyes and her budding beauty have an incomparable charm.