If we summarise these financial remarks, we shall arrive at the conclusion that in view of the importance of his works, and the profits afterwards made on them both by the theatres and the publishers, Mozart was very inadequately paid; but this standard cannot be unreservedly applied to them. The conditions and fluctuations of profit to which even artists are subject are ruled by the prevalent type of living among citizens and the higher classes; the close-fisted organisation of a community of merchants and traders cares little for the comet-like course of an artistic genius, and is only too likely to give it an altogether wrong direction or to ruin it at the outset. From a pecuniary point of view we must acknowledge that Mozart was on the whole as well treated as the majority of his fellow-artists; that both as a composer and a performer he was sometimes no worse, sometimes better, paid than others; that he had no lack of opportunities for earning money, and that in point of fact he had a very good income. If Mozart had possessed the same capacity for business as his father or Joseph Haydn, he would no doubt have reaped far greater advantages from his position in Vienna; but even on what he actually earned he might have lived in ease and plenty. Without ourselves going into calculations on the subject, we have a trustworthy witness for it in Leopold Mozart. During his visit to Vienna, in 1785, he had a watchful eye on the earnings and expenditure of his son, and wrote to his {PECUNIARY EMBARRASSMENT.} (299) daughter (March 19, 1785): "I believe that, _if he has no debts to pay_, my son can now lay by two thousand florins; the money is certainly there, and the household expenses, so far as eating and drinking are concerned, could not be more economical." How far removed was Mozart from such providence! From the time of his marriage we find him in constantly recurring money difficulties; a long list of melancholy documents lets us into the vexations, cares, and humiliations which were the inevitable consequences of his improvidence. Scarcely six months after their marriage the wedded couple were obliged to apply to the Baroness von Waldstädten in the following note, in order to avert a threatened action-at-law by one of their creditors:--