In the very same year that his father boasts of his finances, we find him in a difficulty which necessitated his applying to his publisher, Hoffmeister, who put him off with a couple of ducats. But the saddest insight into the embarrassed and humiliating position in which Mozart found himself after the year 1788 is afforded by his letters to his friend, Michael Puchberg, a wealthy merchant,[85] musical himself, and with two daughters, one of whom distinguished herself as a clavier-player. He was a Freemason, and it seems to have been through the lodge that an intimacy was founded close enough to warrant Mozart's constant application to him for assistance. His wish to borrow a sum sufficiently large to be of permanent benefit to him, either from Puchberg himself or by his instrumentality, was not granted. So that when his rent became due, or his wife's doctor's bill, or a stay in the country had to be provided for, he was constantly obliged to claim assistance from his friend. Whenever it was possible Mozart strove to meet his household embarrassments in a joking mood. In the winter of 1790 Joseph Deiner, the landlord of the "Silver Serpent," who was of use to Mozart in many of his household affairs, called upon him one day and found him in his workroom dancing about with his wife. On Deiner's asking him if he was giving his wife dancing lessons, Mozart answered, laughing, "We are {PECUNIARY EMBARRASSMENT.} (301) warming ourselves, because we are very cold, and have no money to buy fuel." Thereupon Deiner ran home and brought them some wood, which Mozart accepted and promised to pay him for as soon as he made any money.[86] But dancing will not satisfy every need, and the faithful Puchberg was never weary of assisting Mozart. He sent him larger or smaller sums, which Mozart was never in a position to repay, so that after his death his liabilities amounted to one thousand florins. Puchberg, who was of great service to Mozart's widow in the ordering of her affairs, postponed his claims for several years, so as to give her the opportunity of paying him by degrees, as her circumstances improved.[87] Mozart had recourse to other friends besides Puchberg; in April, 1789, he borrowed one hundred florins from an aspirant to Freemasonry, named Hofdemel, as is testified by the existing letter and note of hand.[88] It was not likely that assistance of this kind would materially improve Mozart's position. In 1790, when he undertook the journey to Frankfort, in the result of which he had placed great hopes, he was obliged to raise his travelling expenses by pawning plate and ornaments;[89] and the financial transaction of which he speaks in his letters to his wife, whereby somebody was to hand him over one thousand florins on Hoffmeister's endorsement, shows clearly enough that he had fallen into the hands of usurers, from whom he had striven in vain to free himself by Puchberg's intervention. These facts prove only too