“Oh, dear, dear Polzelli, thou lingerest always in my heart; never, never shall I forget thee (O cara Polzelli, tu mi stai sempre nel core, mal, mal scordeo di te).”

When some one in London told him that Polzelli had sold the piano he had given her, he could not believe it, and only wrote her, “See how they tease me about you” (vedi come mi seccano per via di te).  Still less will he believe that she has spoken ill of him, and he writes: 

“May God bless thee, and forgive thee everything, for I know that love speaks in thee.  Be careful for thy good name, I beg thee, and think often of thy Haydn, who cherishes and tenderly loves thee and to thee will always be true.”

Even to Bologna, whither Polzelli went with her two sons, says Pohl, “followed Haydn’s love—­and his gold.”  He intended after his first London visit to go to Italy to visit her, and wrote further: 

“I cherish thee and love thee as on that first day, and am always sad that I cannot do more for you.  Yet have patience.  Surely the day will come when I can show thee how much I love thee.”

Loisa’s choice of a spouse had been unhappy, as so many marriages have been where the wife is a singer on the stage, and the husband a fiddler in the band.  Haydn seems to have sympathised with Loisa in her unhappy domestic affairs, as cordially as she had sympathised with him in his.  He had sympathy, too, for her similarly ill-matched sister, Christine Negri, for he writes of her as—­

“Already long separated from her husband, that beast, she has been as unhappy as even you, and awakes my sympathy.”

Also in March, 1791, he wrote Loisa about her husband in a manner implying that he was a brute or a maniac:  “Thou hast done well to have him taken to the hospital to save thy life.”  Haydn and Loisa, being Catholics, never thought of seeking divorce:  their only hope of celebrating a formal marriage lay in the death of both her brutish husband and his shrewish wife—­“when four eyes shall close.”  Loisa’s husband was the first to oblige, for in August, 1791, his death wrings a charitable word from even Haydn: 

“Thy poor husband!  I tell thee that Providence has managed well in freeing thee from thy heavy burden, for it is better to be in the other world, than useless in this one.  The poor fellow has suffered enough.”

Later he writes: 

“DEAR POLZELLI:—­Probably that time will come which we have so often longed for.  Already two eyes are closed.  But the other two—­ah, well, as God wills!” Eight years more, and the reluctant and wide-eyed Anna Haydn was foiled of her desire to be a widow in the snug cottage of her choice.  The lovers at last were both single.  But now, freed of their shackles, why do they not rush to each other’s arms?  The only answer we receive is this chill and shocking document found long after Haydn’s death; it is written in Italian and dated shortly after Frau Haydn’s death: