competitions were still in vogue. One of these was held by Augustus
II., Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, one of the most munificent
art-patrons of Europe, but best known to fame from his intimate part in
the wars of Charles XII. of Sweden and Peter the Great of Russia. Here
Bach's principal rival was a French _virtuoso_, Marchand, who, an exile
from Paris, had delighted the king by the lightness and brilliancy of
his execution. They were both to improvise on the same theme. Marchand
heard Bach's performance, and signalized his own inferiority by
declining to play, and secretly leaving the city of Dresden. Augustus
sent Bach a hundred louis d'or, but this splendid _douceur_ never
reached him, as it was appropriated by one of the court officials.

In Bach's half-century of a studious musical life there is but little
of stirring incident to record. The significance of his career was
interior, not exterior. Twice married, and the father of twenty
children, his income was always small even for that age. Yet, by
frugality, the simple wants of himself and his family never overstepped
the limit of supply; for he seems to have been happily mated with wives
who sympathized with his exclusive devotion to art, and united with this
the virtues of old-fashioned German thrift.

Three years before his death, Bach, who had a son in the service of the
King of Prussia, yielded to the urgent invitation of that monarch to
go to Berlin. Frederick II., the conqueror of Rossbach, and one of the
greatest of modern soldiers, was a passionate lover of literature and
art, and it was his pride to collect at his court all the leading lights
of European culture. He was not only the patron of Voltaire, whose
connection with the Prussian monarch has furnished such rich material
to the anecdote-history of literature, but of all the distinguished
painters, poets, and musicians, whom he could persuade by his