of his project. "Dear father," runs the answer, "I love you very dearly, as you may see from my renouncing for your sake my dearest wishes and desires; for if it were not for you, I declare on my honour I would not delay an instant, but would quit my service, give a grand concert, set to work with pupils, and in a year I should be succeeding so well in Vienna that I should be earning at least a thousand dollars per annum. I assure you it is very hard for me so to set aside my hopes of fortune. I am young, as you say--true, but to dawdle away one's youth in such a miserable hole is sad enough, and hurtful besides." The threatened departure was postponed for a time, for the Archbishop required his performers in Vienna; then it was said that they were to return home on April 22. "When I think," wrote Wolfgang (April 11, 1781) "of leaving Vienna without at least a thousand florins in my pocket, my heart sinks within me. Am I to throw away a thousand gulden because of a malicious prince who does what he likes with me for a miserable four hundred florins? I should make quite that by a concert." And now he was to come to the knowledge that not only had he laboured in vain for the Archbishop, but that he had thereby lost the opportunity of introducing himself to the notice of the Emperor. "I cannot quite say to the Emperor that if he wants to hear me he must make haste about it, for that I am going away on such a day--one has to wait for these things. And here I cannot and must not stay, unless I give a concert, for although I should be better off here than at home, if I had only two pupils, it helps one along to have a thousand or twelve hundred florins in one's purse. And he will not allow it, the misanthrope--I must call him so, for so he is, as the whole of the nobility say." There were favourable prospects, too, of a permanent settlement in Vienna at no very distant date. The kapellmeister, Bono, was very old; after his death Salieri would succeed him, and Starzer would take Salieri's place--for Starzer there was as yet no successor--could a better be found than Mozart? Again his father warned him not to make uncertain plans, but to hold fast to what was secure, and to bear what was {PROSPECTS IN VIENNA, 1781.} (177) unavoidable; he warned him also against incautious expressions "which could only do harm." Wolfgang could only answer that his father was partly right and partly wrong; "but that in which you are right far outweighs that in which you are wrong, therefore I will certainly come, and with the greatest pleasure, since I am fully convinced that you would never come in the way of my advancement" (April 18, 1781). But it was hard to submit to the will of his father, and the Archbishop's continual insults did not make it any easier. He writes (April 28, 1781):--