The latter had been obliged to write to him: “Do not allow yourself to be misled by flattery. Be on your guard.” Now reproach was added to mistrust, and Wolfgang was accused of endangering his father’s subsistence, in his old age. He compared Wolfgang to Aloysia, who had scarcely secured a good position in life than she joined her fortunes to those of a comedian--the celebrated Joseph Lange--and neglected her own people. He even went so far as to demand that his son should withdraw his petition, adding that he was in honor bound to do so. There was not in all of this a single trait by which Mozart could recognize his father. He could, indeed, he said, recognize “a father, but not the best, the most loving of fathers, the father solicitous for his own honor and the honor of his children,--in a word, not my father.” And he concludes: “Ask me to do anything you want, anything but that. The very thought of it makes me tremble with rage.” What he had achieved made Mozart, as an artist, manful and sure of himself; and these sufferings had a similar effect on him as a man; but, compared with the latter troubles, all that he had previously undergone was light indeed. We know how deeply and fully Wolfgang loved his father; but to understand his state of mind at this trying time, one must read the father’s own letters. He reproaches his son, even with a want of love, with being a pleasure-seeker in the great city, and with keeping company with the frivolous! The slanders of strangers and the father’s own suspicions conspired to make things worse; and in the circulation of these slanders, a pupil of the abbe Vogler, J. P. Winter, subsequently known by his _Unterbrochenes Opferfest_, played a leading part. The way in which Mozart repelled these slanders, lays his whole heart open before us. It was what might have been expected of one whose art was so thoroughly pure and peaceful. He says, with the utmost modesty and simplicity: “My chief fault is that, apparently, I do not act as I should act;” and in answer to all other slanders, he replies, with the most charming consciousness of self: “I need only consult my reason and my heart to do what is right and just.”