curled over her head, while the portrait of Saint Caecilia gazed down on them and the fantastical blue dress lay spread, as if resting, on the one large chair. She was so tired she fell asleep at once.
For the first few weeks they ran up and down the stairs, unable to believe the house was all theirs. It stood near St. Peter’s Church, Peterskirche, in the very center of the city, where a fair amount of Vienna’s citizens passed every day; you needed only to kneel by the window with your elbows on the sill to see the procession of nobility, priests, organ grinders, children with hoops. There in a corner of Petersplatz was the lemonade stall, now closed for the colder months, and there was also a bookshop with deep bins outside into which you could plunge your hand and come up with thick novels in English, and worn, gilded volumes of the great playwrights of France, Molière and Racine. Below the window was a procession of exquisite hats. Aloysia could tell the newest ones at a glance. She claimed she could distinguish on closer examination which ones had actually been made in Paris, and which copied here in the gorgeous shops in the Graben, where the most fashionable women bought their clothes. Most people spoke some French, the only truly civilized language.
Within a few weeks, all the sisters considered themselves Viennese. No one who lived here could ever wish to live any other place. It was an attitude that you could, in a brief stroll through the streets, touch everything worth having in the whole world, and see the Emperor riding in his carriage. You could speak with a shrug of all else in the country, farms through provincial towns, as if all those who lived there were simply too stupid or unworthy to be here. You could drop a spattering of French and Italian, and at once be understood by everyone.
There was only one problem: The house was not to be just their own.
All the girls were sitting around the kitchen table one morning, gossiping about neighbors and sharing news from their old city, when they became aware that their mother was stacking many new plates and cups in their capacious cupboard, among them an enormous white soup tureen.
Maria Caecilia turned to them, her hands clasped in a matronly way at her waist. “Oh my fleas,” she said tenderly, gazing from one to the next with the greatest satisfaction. “My treasures! I have asked myself since cousin Alfonso found us this house, what shall we do with all the rooms? And what shall I do about our income, for though, alas, Aloysia is earning nicely, more is always needed. I prayed to be lifted from the financial constraints under which we have so often suffered since your earliest days. My Fridolin, who is now an angel, is looking after me, for the answer came. I was at once so grateful I rose from bed and said a whole rosary on my knees. What do I like to do best? What is my greatest gift? Why to cook and bake! And so, with the many extra rooms, I have decided to make our fortune and take in boarders.”
Aloysia opened her eyes wide. “Boarders, Mama? Boarders?” Her lyrical voice rose. “This is how I’m to begin my life as a coveted soprano, living in a house of common boarders?”
“I have my reasons,” their mother replied serenely, wiping a spot off the soup tureen. “It will bring me a comfortable old age if, by any terrible chance, you all do not marry well.” But Aloysia repeated her words incredulously, then leapt up. She rushed into the larger parlor and began to play the clavier. Josefa and the younger girls followed at once, so close together they almost stepped on one anothers’ skirts.
Josefa sank down into the sofa cushions, biting the edge of one finger. “She’s losing her mind,” she said over the fast notes of a Clementi sonata. “We’re led by a madwoman.”
Sophie curled close to her. “But Mama’s a terrible housekeeper; all she does well is cook. Who would take care of boarders?”
“Sophie,” said Constanze quietly as she stood before them, “I think we would. Girls, let’s not talk about it; let’s not argue. Maybe she’ll forget about it by tomorrow.”
No one brought up the subject at dinner that night.
The following afternoon, shortly after the four sisters had closeted themselves away in an empty room to pin a pattern