We know now who came off the victor in this struggle. Mozart’s feelings ranged him, at first, on the Italian side--that is, on that side so far as music alone was concerned. But his German nature told him that the ultimate source of music lay in that earnestness of feeling and of intellectual life which is the creator of poetry, and above all of tragic poetry; and here the Italians were altogether too superficial to satisfy him. And, then, he involuntarily favored the earnest endeavors of the French opera, much as he disliked the French music of the time. And, indeed, the whole mode of the really historic life of Paris, contrasted with the political wretchedness of Germany and Italy, must have made a forcible impression on his mind, spite of his many disagreeable experiences there, and of the many inconveniences and troubles he had to put up with. And, more than all else, the high regard in which the stage, at that time, was held, in France, did not escape his observation. It made a decided and lasting impression on his mind. In his letters, he subsequently made particular mention of the fact that the clown was banished even from the comic opera there. It was not, indeed, until he was about to leave Paris, that he became conscious of this greater, richer, more vigorous life,--of a life such as was evidenced ten years later by the great Revolution. But the fact remains that he did become conscious of it, and, as a consequence, his artistic taste and aims acquired greater fixedness and value. This was Mozart’s gain from his stay in Paris at this time. It was a gain of the mind which richly compensated for his want of pecuniary success.