“But she, too, had not the courage to break the fearful news to the impulsive little woman, unaided and alone.  She stopped her carriage at a little distance from the house, to beg the support of Roth, who lived close by.  But Caroline had heard the carriage-wheels—­had looked out—­had seen her friend descend on that unaccustomed spot, and disappear into Roth’s house.  A fearful presentiment seized her—­she rushed toward the spot—­she saw the two standing in the little garden, wringing their hands and weeping—­she knew all—­and she lay senseless at their feet.  Her little boy Max had followed her in childish alarm.  Nigh forty years have gone by since then; but he has never forgotten the sound of that terrible cry, when his mother, slowly recovering from her swoon, clasped him convulsively in her arms, and wetted his face with a flood of tears.”

Nearly twenty years later it was before Von Weber’s body at last reached the Fatherland.  The agonies of homesickness he had endured seemed to haunt even the cold clay.  In 1841, a writer made an ardent appeal for the restoration of this glory of German song, to the German soil.  The idea became a crusade.  But it was not until 1844, and then chiefly by the aid of Wagner, then conductor in Dresden, and a close friend of Caroline and her children, that success was attained.  The younger son, Alexander, had already been buried; on December 14, 1844, the father’s body was placed by his side.  It had been carried through the streets of Dresden behind a black banner, on which were inscribed words which once would have meant so much:  “Weber in Dresden.”

“In the richly decorated chapel of the cemetery, all the ladies of the theatre, with Schroeder-Devrient at their head, awaited the body, and covered the coffin with their laurels.  The ceremony was at an end.  The torches were extinguished; the crowd dispersed.  But, by the light of two candles still burning on the altar, might be seen the form of a small, now middle-aged woman who had flung herself upon the bier, whilst a pale young man knelt praying by her side.”

This pale young man was the Baron Max Maria von Weber, to whose pen we owe a wonderful portrait of a wonderful man.  It was the son’s love, strangely tempered with wisdom, that showed us all the phases of this character, which, by revealing its worser side, made the better side convincing, complete, alive.

Weber had lived hardly more than half of the allotted three score and ten, but he had lived life in all its phases, from riotous dissipation amid royal splendour and insolence to a brave and whole-souled battle for the welfare of his home.  It is futile to attempt judging the effect of music upon life, and of life upon music.  Too many sorts of man have written too many sorts of music and lived too many sorts of life.  But, if you wish to use Von Weber’s life as an example of the influence of music, surely, you would write Von Weber’s name on the credit side of the ledger, for he reached his best music when his life was best managed.  He took a musician for his wife, and her high ideals of art and life made him a man and a soldier against Fate.