Father and son arrived at Milan before the end of January, and found a safe and comfortable lodging in the Augustine monastery of San Marco. A lay brother was appointed to wait on them, even to the warming of their beds, which attention caused Wolfgang to be "delighted when bedtime came." Their warm friend and patron was the Governor-General, Count Carl Joseph von Firmian (b. 1716). He had been partly educated at Salzburg (where his elder brother Joh. Bapt. Anton was Archbishop until 1740), and had there founded a literary society, whose earnest endeavours after a freer method of scientific inquiry had led to many hard struggles with authority.[10] He afterwards studied at Leyden, and acquired cultivation and taste by frequent travels in France and Italy. As Ambassador at Naples, he won the heart of Winckelmann, who speaks of {MILAN, 1770.} (111) him as one of the greatest, wisest, most humane, and most learned men of his time and country.[11] Count Firmian was appointed Govemor-General of Lombardy in 1759, and spared no efforts to promote the material well-being as well as the intellectual and artistic improvement of his province. Like Münchhausen,[12] he was not only a patron, but an accomplished judge of science and of the arts, and his support and hospitality were freely bestowed on artists and scholars. The Mozarts found a ready sympathiser in him, and his introduction to families of rank obtained for them all the pleasures of the Carnival; they were invited to balls and masquerades, and were obliged to follow the fashion, and order dominos and _bajuti_ (caps, which covered the face to the chin and fell back over the shoulders).[13] L. Mozart thought they were exceedingly becoming to Wolfgang, but shook his head over his own "playing the fool in his old age," and consoled himself with the thought that the things "could be used for linings afterwards." At the opera, where they were often present, they made the acquaintance of the Maestro Piccinni, who was producing his "Cesare in Egitto." Wolfgang's performances at a public concert excited here as elsewhere the wondering admiration of artists and amateurs. "It is the same in this place as in others," writes L. Mozart, "I need not particularise."[14] The friendship which Wolfgang struck up with two clever young singers, of fourteen and fifteen years old, led to his composing for them two Latin motetts. But Count Firmian imposed a severer task on the young musician. He gave a brilliant soirée at his Palace, graced by the presence of the Duke of Modena and his daughter, and the Cardinal Archbishop of Milan. Wolfgang was commissioned to prepare for this soirée three songs to Metastasio's words as a proof of his power to produce serious dramatic music. {THE ITALIAN TOUR.} (112)