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When Paris was the headquarters of the travellers, all possible honour was given them, and the concerts in the French capital brought the Mozarts a substantial sum and they were received very kindly in a visit to the Court of Versailles; of which visit little Nannerl said later, that her only recollection was of the Marquise de Pompadour standing Wolfgang on a table, that he wanted to kiss her, and when she drew back, he said indignantly:

“Who is she that she will not let me kiss her? The Empress kissed me.”

The King’s daughters were very kind to the children, and on New Year’s Day, 1764, the Mozart family dined with the royal family. Wolfgang sat next to the Queen, who talked to him in German, translating the conversation to Louis Fifteenth, while near Wolfgang sat his father and his mother, and Nannerl sat on the opposite side of the table by the Dauphin.

After playing at Versailles the little musicians became the fashion in Paris, and every circle was open to them, while Wolfgang’s reputation as a musical genius was steadily growing, and he had already composed two sonatas which were really good pieces of work from an artistic point of view.

Leaving Paris at last, the Mozarts arrived in London, and after taking lodgings, they hastened to adopt English customs.

“How do you suppose,” wrote Leopold Mozart, to a friend, “my wife and girl look in English hats, and the great Wolfgang in English clothes?”

Almost immediately they were requested to play at Buckingham House, before the King and Queen, where they met with exceptional kindness and appreciation, and the London visit was an unqualified success, one brilliant performance following another in quick succession, until it seemed as if the quaint, charming little music-king who made such an imposing appearance on the stage, must be really as old and grown-up as he seemed when playing in public.

But while they were in England, in lodgings in Chelsea, which was then open country, Leopold Mozart was very ill for a time, so the children could not practise, and for awhile were obliged to run wild, and it would have been hard to imagine that the bright little German girl and the pretty boy, busy making houses and grottos and arbours out of stones and earth and leaves, at the rear of their lodgings, were the infant prodigies of the concert stage. But even then, while he could not use the harpsichord, little Wolfgang was composing, and when tired of out-of-door sports would sit down, with his sister beside him and work on a symphony for the orchestra, and it was thus that his earliest symphonies were composed, which were all marked by real artistic form and feeling. The chief advantage of these compositions, however, was that Wolfgang kept in practise, and was able to announce that at his next concerts all the instrumental numbers would be his own compositions, which, of course, made a great impression on his audiences.

Again they were invited to Court, but this time Leopold Mozart felt obliged to have six sonatas of Wolfgang’s for harpsichord and violin, printed and dedicated to the Queen, so the visit was not the financial benefit to the Mozarts that the first one had been, and from that time the concert tour brought in less great returns than those of the previous months, for both Nannerl and Wolfgang were seriously sick. But they recovered and journeyed on to Holland, where Wolfgang was called to play before the Prince of Orange, and commanded to write six sonatas for the princess, also to write a variation for the harpsichord on the melody which is sung, played and whistled by everybody in Holland and is the real Dutch national hymn.

The little composer was also called upon for various other pieces of musical work and in no way disappointed his critics or his audiences. Again the trio journeyed on, stopping wherever the father felt that his son’s fame might be increased by a concert.