without any compulsion to tolerate the childishness.

For the operas a few words will suffice. In style they are far more
old-fashioned than Mozart's or Gluck's, and he had the dramatic--or,
rather, theatrical--instinct much less strongly developed than either of
these. He wrote strings of songs, duets, etc., for the theatre at
Esterház--many of them for the Marionette Theatre--and was content if
they pleased his patron. One or two were given elsewhere with some
success; but, with regard to _Armide_, he wrote stating his view that
his operatic works should not be given at all save in the conditions for
which they were composed. Those conditions have now for ever passed
away, and excepting as curiosities the operas will never be heard again.




CHAPTER VI

1790-1795


All his magnificence over, Prince Nicolaus was left to sleep tranquilly
in his tomb regardless of the mocking funereal magnificence around him;
Prince Anton succeeded him, and dismissed the band, and pensioned Haydn;
and Haydn, at the age of fifty-eight, was free. Salomon's horses must
have been made to sweat on that rush back from Cologne to Vienna, and he
was rewarded for his own enterprise and their toils. He captured Haydn
easily. Haydn, in fact, having done his day's work manfully, seemed
determined to have a jolly fling in the evening of his life, and, we may
note, he determined to have it at a profit. In the event his little