It was as if life was, for a moment, back to normal.

Then our reverie was interrupted by a most peculiar occurrence: a voice in the street, beyond and far below the closed shutters, singing, in perfect pitch, the aria ‘In Native Worth and Honour Clad’ from Doctor Haydn’s oratorio, The Creation. Jaco joined in, squawking and flapping, as he had been a young bird in the room for the crafting of the piece and it had always brought joy to him. Doctor Haydn sent me to the window and bade me open it a crack, for fear he had summoned a revolt with his earlier playing.

Down below, though, was not a mob led by a tenor singing Haydn, but a single carriage with, standing upon its boards, a French officer in full voice, with that voice directed at these very windows. With its two wheels only and its passenger seats turned out to the sides, the carriage looked like nothing so much as a jaunting car, with a soldier for a jarvey. It was a great surprise to me to see, in Vienna, such an Irish way of getting around. Perhaps the French had brought it with them on their travels; perhaps it was a gift once given to the Kaiser and housed at Schönbrunn, though it was not much of a car, and would not have made much of a gift. With the turn events took, I never thought to ask.

At Doctor Haydn’s instruction, I called out in French to the singing soldier that my master was after knowing his business there, and the soldier told me that, if my master was Joseph Haydn, he had come to pay his respects. He identified himself as Captain Clément Sulemy, and said that the seated soldier was a guard he had brought to stand at Doctor Haydn’s door, as a mark of the Emperor’s respect for the composer. He explained that it was also his purpose to assist Tobias Talbot, the interpreter, who was required to attend an audience with the Emperor. These statements of his business made, to me and to all of Kleine Steingasse, he then personally entreated me to allow him to meet Doctor Haydn.

I told him such a thing was unlikely, and not in my gift, but that I would obtain an answer for him and, when I pressed the shutter closed, the soldier resumed his beautiful singing, and I knew Doctor Haydn would not resist.

In Doctor Haydn’s chamber, Captain Sulemy stood with his hat in his hand, telling the composer at length of the pleasure his works had given, and of how strongly the urge to meet Doctor Haydn had been in him since he first laid eyes on Vienna. He made no mention that his army had then bombed it, besieged it, captured it and put it under martial law, and nor did Doctor Haydn, whose smile was so wide his teeth were at risk of leaving his mouth. I could not say who was the happier of the two. Captain Sulemy asked questions about how certain pieces were to be played or sung, or when and for what purpose they had been written, and Doctor Haydn enjoyed giving him full answers, with the captain eating up every morsel.