were just now fastening their cloaks.
“Ah, young Mozart!” Fridolin Weber cried. “A pleasure to see you again. A fine piece, beautifully played. The guests seemed suitably impressed, as they should have been. Now, have you a carriage? No? We hired one to save my daughters’ dresses from the weather. Let us take you to your lodging. Where’s your music?”
“In my head, Herr Weber.” Through the window he could see how the snow was piling in the yard. “I gratefully accept your offer.”
“Come, my dears.”
The four of them ran through the snow and climbed into the carriage, squeezing together on the facing cushioned seats, for the width of the dresses took up a great amount of room. Both girls had to struggle to keep their heads erect. Slowly the small carriage, drawn by a weary horse, began to nudge its way through the many grander ones of departing guests; the air was filled with cries of “Make way, make way, make way for the Bishop, for the Countess!” A few hot bricks, surrounded by bundles of straw, lay on the coach floor to warm their feet.
Josefa reached behind her, tugged, and then sighed. “I hate and despise tight corsets,” she exclaimed. “If it were up to me, I’d sing in my dressing gown. Stupid, pretentious people! One man kept gaping at me until I thought his wooden teeth would fall in his wineglass. Hasn’t he ever seen a tall woman before? Now I’m truly starving—where’s the basket they gave us, Papa? If they hadn’t, I swear I would have slipped half a dozen chicken legs in with my music.”
“They have paid us, dear; we can’t ask for more.”
“Yes, darling Papa, and you played so well for us. Now, be the table chamberlain and serve us food.”
Fridolin Weber removed the linen covering from the basket and, holding it in the air like a waiter at the finest table, said, “We can’t eat if you won’t join us, Mozart. Will you? Good. Yes, when people make music, they must eat soon after. Come, reach in; there’s no ceremony here.”
Hurled against one another with every jerk of the carriage, the four of them pulled forth fowl, fish, and cakes, and sat back to eat as neatly as they could, sharing the linen basket covering as a napkin. The horses clopped slowly, and the road was crowded, rumors circulated of a carriage broken down a little ahead. Fridolin reached below the food and pulled out a few bottles of wine that they passed about, having no cups; outside the snow fell softly over the city and drifted in through the slightly open window to their laps.
Mozart glanced at Josefa as he passed her the bread. Her eyes were warm in her long, thoughtful face, and she laughed as robustly as she ate. Her nails were bitten to the quick, and she had a space between her front teeth.
Between mouthfuls, she demanded curiously, “Do you play in such houses often, Herr Mozart? The sort with twenty or fifty servants all looking as if they had died and been stuffed and then sewn dead into their livery?”
“More than I can begin to count, Mademoiselle Weber. Unfortunately, they have paid me as I expected they would.” Wryly, he extracted a gold watch from the velvet bag and let it dangle back and forth with the movement of the carriage. Now he was smiling. “I felt the shape of it when they presented it and withheld my groans. Can it be gold ducats, I asked myself. Ah no, said I.”
Aloysia had chosen only sweets, and she was now taking cautious bites from a piece of chocolate almond cake. Her blue shoe was half off her heel, showing her white stocking, slightly discolored with blue dye. Mozart looked at her curiously; so this was the one who was driving his friend Leutgeb from his senses. How little she was! Rather like a porcelain doll he had seen once in an empty anteroom on one of his childhood tours, sitting all alone in a large velvet-covered chair, her legs stuck out before her, her head to one side. He wondered if, should he ever pass that way again, he would find it sitting there still.
Her voice was light. “Herr Mozart,” she said.
“Mademoiselle Weber.”
“You mentioned when we met a few weeks ago that you had been in London as a boy to play the clavier. (I also play excellently ; we all do but for our smallest sister, who wants to be