_À propos!_ how about the Archbishop? Next Monday I shall have been absent from Salzburg for six weeks. You know, my dear father, that it is only for love of you that I remain in Salzburg, for, by heaven! if it rested with me I would have torn up the agreement and resigned my appointment before I left home this time. It is not Salzburg, but the prince and the proud nobility who become more insupportable to me every day. I should hail with delight a letter informing me that he no longer needed my services. The patronage I have here would assure me of present and future means of support, without taking into account the chances by death, which none ought to count upon, but which is no bad friend to a man in search of employment. But anything in the world to please you--and it would come all the easier to me if I could get away now and then for a little to take breath. You know how hard it was to get away this time, and that without some great cause there is no possibility of it again. Come to Munich and hear my opera, and then tell me if I am wrong to feel unhappy when I think of Salzburg. His father seeks to reassure him as to the leave of absence (December 25, 1780):-- As regards the six weeks, I have decided not to take any steps in the matter, but if I hear anything on the subject I shall certainly answer that we understood you were to remain in Munich six weeks after the composition of the opera, for its rehearsal and production, but that I could not imagine that his highness would suppose that such an opera could be composed, copied, and performed in six weeks, &c. It would not, however, have been a matter of regret to L. Mozart if Wolfgang could have met with a good situation in Munich. Wolfgang himself had been rendered full of hope from the gracious reception of the Elector, and wrote to his father that if he succeeded in settling in Munich, he (the father) must not long remain in Salzburg, but must follow him thither. He was very anxious to demonstrate in Munich that he could write other things besides operas, and he turned his church music to account. With this object he wrote to his father (November 13, 1780):-- {IDOMENEO.} (166) Be so kind as to send me the scores of the two Masses that I have at home, and also the Mass in B flat major (275 K.), for Count Seeau has promised to speak of them to the Elector. I should like to make myself known in this style. I have just heard a Mass by Grua (kapellmeister in 1779, died 1826); it would be easy to compose half-a-dozen a day of that kind of thing.