manner possible' (December 21,1782). During the following winter he again played regularly for Prince Gallitzin, also for Count Johann Esterhazy, Count Zichy, &c. He calculates for his father's benefit that, from February 26 till April 3, he would have to play five times for Gallitzin, and nine times for Esterhazy, to which might be added three of Richter's concerts and five of his own, besides chance invitations. "Have I not enough to do?" he asks. "I do not think I shall be allowed to get out of practice." When his father was in Vienna in 1785, he wrote to his daughter that Wolfgang's harpsichord had been to the theatre and to different private houses quite twelve times between February 11 and March 12.[64] What amount of fee Mozart received for his performances in private we have no means of ascertaining; in general, however, the aristocracy were accustomed to reward distinguished artists according to their deserts, and the exceptional position of the Viennese nobility enabled the artists to accept their liberality without loss of dignity; the more so as it was usually founded on sentiments of esteem and consideration. That the friendly demeanour of persons of high rank was highly prized by the artists themselves, there can be no doubt; nor would there be wanting some who sought to merit it by servile adulation. From any tinge of this Mozart was absolutely free; not only was he unfettered by the forms of social class distinctions, but he moved in society with all the independence of a distinguished man, without laying claim to the license usually accorded to artists of genius. The etiquette of rank was no bar to his intimacy with Prince Karl Lichnowsky; and another of his true friends was Count August Hatzfeld, who had carefully cultivated a considerable musical talent, and was a first-rate quartet violinist. He became so imbued with the spirit of Mozart's quartets, that the latter was said to have declared that he liked nobody's execution of them so well as Count {MARRIED LIFE.} (292) Hatzfeld's.[65] The song in "Idomeneo" with obbligato violin was composed for him. His noble character won for him universal esteem, which was intensified by the calmness with which he met death in his thirty-first year (Bonn, 1787). Mozart wrote to his father in a very serious letter (April 4, 1787):-- On this subject (death and dying) I have already expressed my mind to you on the occasion of the melancholy death of my best and dearest friend, Count von Hatzfeld. He was thirty-one--just my age. I do not mourn for _him_, but for myself and for all those who knew him as I did.