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One hundred and fifty florins was no great sum assuredly, but at
this time it was a small fortune to Haydn. He was able to do a
good many things with it. First of all, he took a lodging for
himself--another attic! Spangler had been very kind, but he could
not give the young musician the privacy needed for study. It
chanced that there was a room vacant, "nigh to the gods and the
clouds," in the old Michaelerhaus in the Kohlmarkt, and Haydn
rented it. It was not a very comfortable room--just big enough to
allow the poor composer to turn about. It was dimly lighted. It
"contained no stove, and the roof was in such bad repair that the
rain and the snow made unceremonious entry and drenched the young
artist in his bed. In winter the water in his jug froze so hard
during the night that he had to go and draw direct from the
well." For neighbours he had successively a journeyman printer, a
footman and a cook. These were not likely to respect his desire
for quiet, but the mere fact of his having a room all to himself
made him oblivious of external annoyances. As he expressed it,
he was "too happy to envy the lot of kings." He had his old,
worm-eaten spinet, and his health and his good spirits; and
although he was still poor and unknown, he was "making himself
all the time," like Sir Walter Scott in Liddesdale.
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