It was the same with the musicians and singers--they were cooks, waiters and valets, and when there were guests these performers were notified to be in readiness to "do something" if called upon. It was the same with painters--every court had its own. Rubens, as we know, was looked upon by the Duke of Mantua as his private property, and the artist had to run away, when the time was ripe, to save his soul alive. Van Dyck was court painter to Charles the First, and married when he was told to do so. There is no such office as "Poet Laureate of England"--the Laureate is poet to the King, and used to dine with the Master of the Hounds. Later he was allowed to choose his domicile and live in his own house, like Saint Paul, the prisoner at Rome. His yearly stipend is yet that tierce of Canary. * * * * * Silver Creek: Leopold Mozart, and the son who caused his name to endure, were in the employ of the Archbishop of Salzburg. The Archbishop was a veritable prince, with short breath and a double chin, and no shade of doubt ever came to him concerning the divinity of his succession. He ruled by divine right, and everybody and everything were made to minister to the well-being of his person and estate. The Mozarts were too poor to escape from the employ of the Archbishop, and he took pains to warn all interested persons not to harbor, encourage or entice his servants away on penalty of dire displeasure. Mozart ate with the servants, and we have his letters written to his sister showing how his seat was next below that of the coachman. When he was to play before invited guests he was made to wait in the entry until the footman called him, and there he often stood for hours, first on one foot, then on t' other. It is easy to ask why a man of such sublime talent should endure such treatment, but the simple fact is Mozart was gentle, yielding, kind--immersed in his music--with no power to set his will against the tide of tendency that 'compassed him round. The Archbishop forbade his playing at concerts or entertainments, and blocked the way to all advancement. The Archbishop didn't have a diplomat like Rubens to cope with, or a fighter like Wagner, or a plotter like Liszt, or a stiletto-bearing man like Paganini, and so Mozart wrote his music on a table in one corner of a beer-garden, and waltzed with his wife, Constance, to keep warm when there was no fire and the weather was cold, and all the time danced attendance on the Archbishop of Salzburg. All of his feeble, spasmodic efforts at freedom came to naught, because there was no persistency behind them. Gladly would he have sold his services for three hundred gulden a year, but even this sum, equal to one hundred fifty dollars a year, was denied him. He was always composing, always making plans, always seeing the silver tint in the clouds, but all of his music was taken by this one or that in whom he foolishly trusted, and only debt and humiliation followed him.