Volume I Part 9 (1/2)

When Mozart reached Munich, he was still into the French custom of the time, in red coat with black buttons He hurried to meet Aloysia and felt at once the chill of her jilt The lips once so warave hinise the one for whose sake once she shed sohi, in a loud voice, with forced gaiety, ”Ich lass das Madel gern das ive up the girl that gives up me” It was on Christmas Day that Mozart had hastened to the presence of his beloved For the Christallantly he took it But his gaiety was hollow, and when he went to the house of a friend he locked himself in a room and wept for days

Still he continued to live with the Webers and to brave out his despair before them all He feared to turn to his father for full sympathy, and his fears were apparently justified, for his father see him for his foolish ”dreams of pleasure” To this ill-timed reproof Mozart answered:

”What do you , for what mortal on the whole compass of the earth does not often dream? above all, drea dreams, if you will--dreams which, if realised, would have rendered my life (now far rather sad than happy) more endurable”

In a feeeks, however, he returned hohtened a part of his trial in Munich, followed him And this was in the month of January of the year 1779

As for Aloysia, she had cause enough to regret jilting one of the greatest, as well as one of the e and lived unhappily with hiave and received cause for jealousy Years after, Mozart drifted back into her vicinity under curious circuood friends, and such friends, that for hi to Jahn, who adds, ”Otherwise he would hardly have taken the role of Pierrot in the pantomime in which his wife played Columbine and Mozart the Harlequin”

Nohl thus suhtened Aloysia's path in life, nor the peace offroed wonise what he had really been; she liked to talk about hihtest memories of her youth, some of that lovable charm seemed to revive that Mozart had imparted to her and to all hoay, unassu manner, her freedom from all the usual virtuoso caprices in society, and her readiness to give pleasure by her talent to every one, as if a portion of the tender spirit hich Mozart once loved her had passed into her soul and brought forth fresh leaves from a withered stem But years of faults and follies intervened for Aloysia Meanwhile, he parted froh the esteeer the sae history of lives upon this earth, there cannot beso sadly treated by this woest sister A novelist would not dare tax the credulity of his readers with such a plot But such i exclusively to the historian

The Webers hly successful as a prima donna In March, 1781, the Archbishop, to whom Mozart played the part of musical lackey, summoned him to the sarinding temper almost drove the pious Mozart to contempt of all churchmen At least he drove him finally to a declaration of independence which, in ourThe Archbishop's brother, Count Arco, was so infuriated at the i to present a fornation, that he heaped abuse upon him and finally kicked him out of the roonores the fact that Mozart was restrained from retaliation only by the fact that he was in the apartment of the prince, and that it was the dream of his life and his very definite plan to meet Count Arco and return the kick with interest But the Archbishop and the count went back to Salzburg and the opportunity did not occur

The portrait usually presented of Mozart end that Keats died of a broken heart because of a bitter review of his poetry The fact being, of course, that Keats' death was due to constitutional weakness, and that the e desire to punch the critic's head

Strange to say, Mozart could not convince his pusillaniy to the Archbishop for being kicked But he was so deeply offended that he never returned to Salzburg So much for those who cherish the pathetic belief that the days of patrons were of benefit to the artist and his art

Mozart did not starve upon being left positionless in Vienna The emperor desired to establish a national opera, and Mozart took up the co aus dem Serail” In the first moment of his quarrel with the Archbishop Mozart had left the retinue and sought rooo for a home but back to the household of the Webers?--now ood father had died and Aloysia had e to Leopold Mozart, and he began a series of bitter rebukes, which the son answered with aentleness

”What you write about the Webers, I do assure, is not the fact I was a fool about Madae, I own; but what is a man not when he is in love? But I did love her truly, and even now I feel that she is not indifferent to me; it is perhaps, therefore, fortunate that her husband is a jealous booby and never leaves her, so that I seldo her Believeperson, and I cannot serve her in proportion to her kindness to me, for indeed I have not time to do so”

A little later one of Mozart's letters is interrupted and is finished in a strange hand as follows:

”Your good son has just been summoned by Countess Thun, and he has not tirets, and requestspost-day, he does not wish you to be without a letter froain

I hope you will excuse reeable to you as what your son would have written I beg hter I am your obedient friend,

”CONSTANZE WEBER”

This is the first appearance in Mozart's correspondence of this naer sister of Aloysia She had no dra and played fairly well, especially at sight Strangely enough, she had an unusual fondness for fugues and ossips of Vienna lost no ti his renewal of friendshi+p with the Webers The buzz became so noisy that it reached the alert ears of the father in Salzburg, and he wrote de shouldto ossip that he is to ossip, he calls it

”I will not say that, living in the sa lady to whom people have married me, I am ill-bred and do not speak to her, but I am not in love with her I banter and jest with her when tis when I chance to be at ho I write in my roo ed to marry all those hom I have jested, I should have at least two hundred wives”

A the rooms elsewhere offered to Mozart was one at Aurnhahter of the faeance

According to his picture of her, she was so ugly and untidy that even Mozart could not flirt with her He draws an a picture of his predicament--a sort of Venus and Adonis affair, with a ho two hours every day with her,--I areeable But, worse still, she is seriously sht at first it was a joke, but now I know it to be a fact When I first observed it--by her beginning to take liberties, such as reproaching , and si a fool of herself, to tell her the truth in a civilthan ever At last I was always very polite, except when she began any of her pranks, and then I snubbed her bluntly; but one day she took my hand and said, 'Dear Mozart, don't be so cross; you may say what you please I shall always like you' All the people here say that we are to besuch a face She told hed at it I knoever, fro that we are to travel ie me I told her e of o there every day, but only every two days, so the report will gradually die away She is nothing but an ah In those days it was far from prudish and Mozart was always of unusual fascination for women He loved frivolity and went about much, but he seeiven hiossip of that time and this, that he was a confirmed rake It is impossible for any one acquainted with Mozart's career and letters to accuse him of studious hypocrisy, and this accusation is necessary to support the theory that he was anything but a serious-s a well-behaved and conscientious man

He finally left the home of the Webers and had previously written his father, as we have seen, that he was not at all in love with Constanze

But he was either in love with her without knowing it, or he soon tu the house, he plighted his troth with her