For some time after little Mozart went away the beautifully painted stool in front of the harpsichord was never empty; but by-and-by the children's zeal wore off, and their mother was too busy to see that they practised daily. They passed most of their time at Schönbrünn, which both the emperor and empress preferred to Vienna, and it was so near the capital that ministers and ambassadors could easily drive out to consult them when needful. In their leisure moments, which were few, it rested them to watch the growth of their flowers, or to plan alterations in their garden, while the empress would sometimes go to see the poor in their cottages, and take Marie Antoinette with her. But, in the summer of 1765, when the little archduchess was nine years old, a break suddenly occurred in their peaceful, happy life. The emperor was obliged to go to Innsprück, and had already bidden farewell to his family and entered his carriage, when he suddenly ordered the coachman to stop. 'Be kind enough to bring me, the Archduchess Marie Antoinette,' he said to the equerry; and soon the little girl was flying down the road. 'Good-bye, my darling, good-bye,' he whispered, taking her in his arms; 'now run home again.' And as she disappeared round a corner he remarked to his equerry: 'I just wanted to see her once more.' It was as if he had guessed what would befall him, for, shortly after, news was received that he had died on his journey. The empress had loved her husband dearly, but she was not the sort of person to shut herself up with her grief, and before the year was out an event happened which occupied all her thoughts. This was a hint let fall by Louis XV., king of France, of a marriage, by-and-bye, between his grandson the dauphin and Marie Antoinette. The plan was to be kept entirely secret for the present, but the empress was greatly pleased, unlike the bridegroom's mother, or his aunt the strong-willed madame Adelaide. The dauphine, mother of the young Louis, was a Saxon princess, and wished her son to marry his Saxon cousin. The dauphin, a good-natured, heavy, ill-mannered youth, did not wish to marry anybody, or indeed do anything except hunt—but he was not consulted. Still, out of respect to his daughter-in-law (and perhaps because he was a little afraid of her), the French king kept a profound silence on the matter to all but the empress, till things were suddenly altered by the death of the dauphine in 1767. Then, no one knew how, the marriage began to be spoken of in Paris, and much more openly at Vienna, to the great embarrassment of the French ambassador. Louis XV. had already an Austrian great-granddaughter, for the emperor Joseph II. had some years before married the Infanta Isabel, and they had one little girl, named Maria Theresa, after her grandmother. Unfortunately the young empress was seized with smallpox, which was the scourge of those times, and died, while her sister-in-law, the Archduchess Josepha, likewise fell a victim to the