Story3

For one thing, Archbishop Schrattenbach had gone to his Reward and a new fellow had replaced him--the Prince Archbishop Colloredo!

Everything you have ever heard about him is true--including the fact that he was so mean, he even ordered the people of Salzburg not to set up their Christmas Manger scenes! And the reason? Well....a couple of shopkeepers put up elaborate manger scenes in their shop windows, with little figures resembling local friends and neighbors. The images of the Archbishop were--ah,less than flattering.

Having thus endeared himself to the people of Salzburg, he further endeared himself to me by treating me like a disobedient slave. What I could never have admitted, though, was that he reminded me too much of the kind of person Papa had become: controlling and autocratic.

In any event, Papa wanted to take another leave of absence to take me to Paris. The Archbishop no doubt knew that Papa was job- hunting as much for himself as for me, so that ended that. Papa, not be be deterred, ordered Mama to take me to Paris--and so off we went. It was to be the beginning of the end.

This picture from the movie "Amadeus", shows the Archbishop and his henchman, Count Arco, who literally kicked me down a flight of stairs after the Archbishop fired me. That happened after I came home from Paris--and going to Paris had been bad enough in itself! Just listen to what happened:

It started out pleasantly enough. We stopped on the way for a visit with Uncle Alois, in Augsburg, and it turned out to be most amusing. He had a daughter--my first cousin, Maria Thekla, whom I mentioned earlier. She was as cute and saucy as a button, though I suspect she had a few miles on her as well. We had some rather raucus carryings-on as she was the first girl in all my twenty-two years who was ever about anything other than music.

That's her, leaning out the window of the big pink house. She made Mama a little nervous, I think--but I believe she and Uncle Alois were hoping I might someday marry her. Later on, she managed to get herself pregnant with a local man--and no one talked about her very much after that.

Another one of our stops was in Mannheim, Germany--from which the famous Mannheim Steamroller band took its name. Landing a position there would have been wonderful, but instead, I fell in love!

Ah...Aloisa Weber! Beautiful, innocent, and oh-so talented! In short, everything I wanted! I'd have married her on the spot if it hadn't been for Mama--and, of course, Papa back home. But it wasn't fated to be, I'm sorry to say. She promised to wait for me when I got back from Paris (Oh, I knew I'd never get a job there!), but by that time her career as an opera star was on the rise and she wasn't quite so innocent any more-- and she certainly didn't have time for me at all. To her, I was just a silly little man who had been a failure in Paris, and I was far beneath her new, fancy friends and lovers.

A part of me was always fond of her, though, just as everyone always remembers their First Love. And oddly enough, in her old age, she often thought back fondly about me. Being remembered as the girl who dumped Mozart was probably her only remaining claim to fame by that time--which is really rather sad.

There was yet a third woman who figured into the strange, sad, ill-fated trip to Paris, and that was the Queen of France herself. As small children, Marie Antoinette and I played together in her mother's palace in Vienna. You'll remember that I even asked her to marry me when we grew up--but THAT was obviously not to be, either!

Marie Antoinette snubbed me like few others ever did again in my life! She left me standing in a waiting room for hours like a menial servant, then asked me to play "muzak" for her and her lady friends on a broken piano. She didn't seem to remember me at all -- or if she did, she certainly didn't let anyone know it! After all, what was I but a common German servant?

Everyone, of course, knows what finally happened to her. She was beheaded about a dozen years later during the Reign of Terror. It was a terrible thing. She had been rude and thoughtless toward me, but I still would not have wished her harm. At heart, she was not a bad woman, and most of her troubles came about because ironically she herself was snubbed by the French court -- just because she was a German.

Poor mama, God rest her soul, never wanted to come on that awful trip. She was like a fish out of water, and just as miserable. But Papa had insisted, and so it went. She died of typhus, weeping for Papa, and hating Paris with a passion. It was the first real tragedy of my life, and aterwards nothing was ever the same. And Papa, true to form, tried to pin the blame for her death on me!

That about finished it for me with Salzurg, the Archbishop, and even with Papa. There were no opportunities for me there, and so after a long and ridiculous battle that ended with me being kicked down a flight of stairs by a minion of the Archbishop, I packed my bags and moved to the golden, glorious

land of opportunity...

He was the Austrian Ambassador to France, and he had been very friendly and helpful to my Papa the first time we came to Paris, while Nannerl and I were brilliant performing children. This time, he was much less helpful, and dismayed by the fact that I was a twenty-two year old young man, adrift in a foreign city, and as helpless and scared as if I wre still eight years old. He let me stay at his house for a couple of weeks, then put me on a cheap coach home, called a "diligence"-- one of those "local" excursions which stopped at every little village and hamlet along the way. I had to ride with some of the most horrid people I had ever met in my life, including a ghastly man whose face was eaten away with syphillis. For the rest of my life, this disease held abject terror for me, and at all costs I avoided any situation that could put me at such risk.