plans were plans for small lights, for inferior composers, for daubers in music. And, at last, he cries out to his son forcibly enough: “Get thee to Paris. Have the great about thee. _Aut Cæsar, aut nihil!_ The very thought of seeing Paris should have kept you from indulging in such foolish whims.” When Wolfgang received this letter he became ill, such was its effect upon him. Not one of his most sacred feelings but was touched by it--his love, his sense of duty, his honor, and his pride in his art. On one point alone his father had said nothing: his love. To have spoken of it would have been unavailing. And yet he reminded him of all his changing inclinations, of his tears for the little Kaiser girl in Munich, his little episode with “Baesle,” and his _andante_ for sweet Rosa Cannabich. And so Wolfgang’s child-like feeling bent to his father’s will, and his inexperience, to his father’s tried and tested prudence. He had, he assured his parents, done all that he had done, out of devotion to the family, and they might believe what they liked about him, provided they did not believe anything bad of him, for he was “a Mozart and a well-minded Mozart.” And at last, the full sun of confiding love breaks out again: “After God, my papa! This was my motto as a child, and I am true to it yet.” Preparations were immediately made for his departure, and, after a little, Mozart was in Paris. The sonata for the piano in A minor, which bears the date “Paris, 1778,” tells us by its energetic rhythm and the passionate lament of the finale, better than all else, what was going on, at that time, in Mozart’s soul. It is the most direct language of a heart bowed down with sorrow, and discloses to us, just as the aria _Non so d’onde viene_ did, a short time before, a region newly conquered to poetic expression, in tones. And, indeed, we find that Mozart’s character had noticeably matured after these first struggles with his beloved father. The sudden death of his mother in Paris contributed largely to intensify and elevate this, his earnestness of mind. Upon its heels followed the painful disappointment, that his love for the beautiful Aloysia was a mortal one, and he had, at last, though with great difficulty, to overcome himself and return to Salzburg, which he so thoroughly hated. Such are the events and experiences which lead us to the first real masterpiece of our artist, to his _Idomeneo_. We shall meet again in his later years with the traces of the trials of these days in Mannheim, and especially of the full recognition of the worth of a father’s controlling love, as he then most decidedly experienced it.