THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH
It was a wondrously beautiful morning in May; the sun shone clear and bright; the birds sang in all the shrubs and trees, and the gay spring flowers exhaled their fragrant odors in all the gardens.
Nature had donned its holiday attire, and yet humanity was in mourning; the sun shone clear and bright, and yet the eyes of men were sombre and lustreless, and instead of rejoicing over the fresh verdure and the blossoms of spring, they grieved, and their hearts were frozen with care and pain.
For the Emperor Napoleon had raised his proud hand again against Germany; he had defeated the Austrians at Ratisbon and Landshut, and made his triumphant entrance into Vienna on the 12th of May, 1809.
For the second time the imperial family, fleeing from the victorious Napoleon, had been compelled to leave the capital; for the second time the foreign emperor occupied the palace of Schoenbrunn, and Vienna had to bow again to the will of the all-powerful conqueror.
The Emperor Francis had escaped with his wife and children to Hungary, and Vienna, whose inhabitants had at first sworn enthusiastically to defend their city to the last man, and lay it in ashes rather than surrender it to the French, had nevertheless opened its gates already on the 12th of May to the Emperor Napoleon and his army. It had to bow to stern necessity, for during the previous night the Archduke Maximilian, with the weak forces with which he had been ordered to defend Vienna, had evacuated the city, had burned the great bridge of Thabor to prevent Napoleon from pursuing him, and had succeeded in escaping, leaving it to the Viennese to make terms with the conqueror and invoke his clemency and generosity. They had thus been obliged to conceal their rage and exasperation in their hearts, and surrender to the tender mercies of the French emperor; they had opened their gates to the enemy, but not their hearts. Their hearts were filled with boundless rage and shame, which brought wild imprecations to the lips of the men, and tears to the eyes of the women.
Joseph Haydn, the silver-haired octogenarian, had still the heart of a fiery man in his bosom, and his trembling lips cursed the conqueror, the relentless foe of Austria, and called down the wrath of Heaven on the French emperor, who always spoke of peace and conciliation, and always stirred up quarrels and enmities. The latest reverses of Austria had produced a most painful impression upon the aged maestro, and the ravishing joy which had illuminated Joseph Haydn's face at the performance of "The Creation," had long since disappeared from his careworn and mournful countenance. His eyes were gloomy and dim, and often veiled with tears; and when he played his imperial hymn, as he did every morning, he could not sing to it, for tears choked his voice, and the words, so full of confidence and triumphant hope, seemed to him a bitter mockery.
He led now a very quiet and lonely life at his small house in the Mariahilf suburb, and he did not even leave it, as he had formerly always done, on Sundays, in order to go to mass. The sight of the French uniforms wounded his heart, and he grieved on seeing his beloved Viennese oppressed and humiliated.
"God is every where," said Haydn to his faithful servant Conrad, "and He will hear my prayer even though I should utter it in my quiet closet, and not at church. But to-day, my friend, I will pray to God in the open air. See how gloriously the sun shines, and how blue the sky is! To-day is Sunday. Let us, therefore, put on our Sunday clothes. Conrad, give me the fine ring which the great King of Prussia presented to me, and then come to hear mass in my little garden."Conrad fetched quickly the Sunday clothes of his master; he helped him to put on the silken and silver-embroidered coat, and put the large diamond-ring, which Frederick the Great had one day sent to the great master of harmony, on his finger. Then he handed him his hat and his strong cane, which was adorned with a golden cross-piece, that the tottering octogenarian might lean on it. Joseph Haydn now left the room slowly, his right hand leaning on his cane, his left arm resting on the shoulder of his servant. Behind him walked with a grave step the old cat, an heirloom from Haydn's lamented wife, and hence highly prized and honored by the aged maestro. Purring softly, now raising its beautiful long tail, now rolling it up, the cat followed close in the footsteps of its master, through the hall and across the yard to the small garden.