As my uncle put it to me, a right hames had been made of the evacuation, and he currently has a deputation, led by Hauptmann Koestler, with the French, discussing the form of the negotiations to follow. Vienna is lost, or at the very least about to be. There will be French in our streets soon, hungry soldiers with their war-rage not spent, spoiling for a feed or a fight or the company of a woman.

This awful prospect had turned the mood of the citizens by the time I made my way home. There was weeping and renting of clothes and, in most streets, burning pyres of anti-French propaganda and patriotic sheet music. I saw windows smashed and shops looted; Viennese robbing Viennese before the French came to do the same. This city has been abandoned by law, decency and civility, the three of them absconding hand-in-hand over the Tabor Bridge before it turned to ash.

I arrived back at Doctor Haydn’s house to be told by Fraulein Kremnitzer that he had taken to his bed, awaiting the arrival of a priest. I went to him immediately and, knowing he had taken no breakfast, urged him to eat. Food supplies are running low and he must eat while he can. We have some old bread, but no new flour, and we have hard biscuits. Our milk will not last beyond the day.

I found Doctor Haydn with his Bible in his hand and, while Fraulein Kremnitzer went to fetch bread and milk, I asked him to talk to me about his Bible once again, with the aim of diverting his thoughts from his fears of the French. The book is something of a treasure of his, as it is the one he used when debating the libretto of The Creation with Baron van Swieten. As I understand it, based principally on Doctor Haydn’s tellings of it, the idea for the oratorio was conceived in England on his second stay there, when he was offered a long poem as a draft libretto. The subject of the poem was the Creation, one of great interest to him through his friendship with William and Caroline Herschel, the astronomers who had given accounts of the likely tumult at the start of the universe.

Doctor Haydn passed the text to Baron van Swieten for further work but, when it was returned to him, the poem was nowhere to be seen and, in its place, were verses from Genesis and Psalms, and some of Milton’s Paradise Lost. As a debt was owed to the English for the origin of the piece, Baron van Swieten had used the English Bible of King James as his source, then set about translating the sentences directly into German. Doctor Haydn located the relevant passages in his own German Bible, so that a measure of authenticity might be made. He marked the pages with notes and, for a time, his Bible travelled between this house and Baron van Swieten’s as the two settled on the libretto. His Bible, Doctor Haydn says, is older than Martin Luther.