Page:St. Nicholas - Volume 41, Part 2.djvu/311



ST.NICHOLAS

Vor. XLI AUGUST, 1914 No. 10

Copyright, 1914, by Tue CeEnTURY Co. All rights reserved.

WHEN MOZARY RACED WITH

MARIE ANTOINETTE

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B — Ka therine D Cather

e was the child of a poor musician, and she was an Austrian archduchess, vet they playved as happily i the stately old garden as if there were no such thing in the world as high or low degree. The fountains around the cgrotto plashed and murmured, their falling waters meeting below the terraces in a stream that went sing- ing away into the pines beyvond: while from a pond - half hidden in a riot of reeds and rushes, a speckled trout or silver-striped bass leaped up into the sun- light.

Wolfgang felt as 1f he had come to paradise, and it was nat strange. The only garden in which he had cever played was the one at his honre in Salzburg, where there was just a plot of grass and gnarled oak-tree, with a clump of vellow jasmine dipping over the old stone wall. . poor little garden, and sutfering some- times for the care his father and mother were hoth too husy to give it, while the great park at Schimbrunn, with its myriad singing-birds and acres and acres of grove and lawn, was the loveliest spot in all of lovely Austria.

"' See!’ he exclaimed, pointing to where a fountain threw out a veil of iridescent spray. ‘‘ There is a rainbow there, just like the one we see in the sky after a shower.”

Marie Antoinette nodded. To her the gleaming colors in the spray were an every-day sight.

““Of course,’” she replied, *‘ there is always a rainbow where a fountain plays. Itis great fun to run 867

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