I suggested he rest a while but he would have none of it, and asked me to give my report into the first movement of Herr van Beethoven’s symphony, which I did. I set up his breakfast table across his counterpane and placed the manuscript upon it, with my notes beside me. There is much to say about the movement. The four-note motif that initiates it is striking in the way it rushes and stops; the way it sets a pace and then subverts it in an instant, and declares itself to be something else. I explained to him that the movement was in his own sonata form, which pleased him, as he has spoken of teaching this form to Herr van Beethoven. We identified the second theme of the piece, which is in E flat major, and more lyrical than the first. We discussed the use of antiphonal chords for the strings and woodwinds, and the surprising encounters that resulted with the four-note motif.

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.