The watch is but one treasure in this room, in this house that the French may yet bomb, burn or in some other way desecrate, and I will not allow it to slip from memory if it is soon nowhere else. The house as it now stands is a fine sort of place, with the second storey added by Doctor Haydn some years ago. His quarters and music room are up there, both of them as commodious as needs be, as the Kapellmeister’s numerous tokens of esteem and appreciation share space with a library, an English fortepiano, a clavichord and the many other instruments and resources that might be expected of a composer of the first rank.

The remainder of us are quartered downstairs. Johann, as copyist and valet, has the largest chamber. I have the smallest, a converted scullery at the back, but it is kinder than that description suggests. It has its own small fireplace and a view of the garden, which is a three-sided courtyard with beds of a formal design, a paved path the shape of a keyhole and several fruit trees. The cherry is now in blossom and, from the desk at which I write, I would call it a wonderful spring, if not for the French.

When Johann departed for Eisenstadt two weeks ago, there was no consideration that war might come to stop his return. We had heard news that Napoléon had been defeated at Regensburg and did not learn the truth for several more days.

In February and March, Doctor Haydn, with my very limited assistance, brought new breath to a mass he wrote some years ago for Princess Maria Esterházy; one of the name-day masses he was in the habit of writing for her annually, for performance on 8th September, the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary. For the past seven years, her husband, Prince Nikolaus, has paid Doctor Haydn a pension, for friendship and service already rendered, stipulating that the money is for comfort and not for the creation of new works. Doctor Haydn, though, feels a sense of obligation to present a gift in return. For several weeks, we toiled at his chosen mass, no matter that the winds in it are too prominent for my limited talents, which are better directed towards strings, if anywhere at all. I am not certain the mass is improved, nor even certain it is much different. Each day I worked on it intent to be responsible for as little damage to it as possible. As we progressed, Johann dutifully copied it and is in Eisenstadt to deliver it for performance in the Bergkirche.

Doctor Haydn is resting now, and there are birds in the garden, twittering and chittering, carefree neutral creatures in this war that they are. I would be one of those birds today, if I could, and spared for a time our human anguishing around the war, the French and hunger.