Mozart’s mother died in Paris when her son and she were there alone together.  He wrote the news of her death to a friend of his father’s and bade him tell the father only that she was seriously ill but would probably recover, and gradually to prepare him for the worst.  This letter he wrote at two o’clock in the morning; the same night he wrote his father a long letter full of news, incidentally saying that his mother was very ill, but that he hoped for the best, and that, in any case, resignation to the will of God was imperative.  A few days later he wrote another letter telling the bitter truth, and telling it with most devout concern for his father’s health and reconciliation with the divine dispensation.  In this letter he seems rather the father to his own father than the young gallant of twenty-two.  It was a good heart the boy had.

Mozart had been so much caressed and flattered by court beauties as a child that he was precocious in flirtation.  His sister was the confidante and messenger of all sorts of boyish amours.  There is a fine mysteriousness in the letters he wrote his mother while he was making a musical conquest of Milan like a veteran musician, and betraying his fourteen-year-old boyishness only in such phrases as this:  “I kiss your hand a thousand times, and have a great deal to say to my sister; but what?  That is known only to God and myself.  Please God I hope soon to be able to confide it to her verbally.”

This does not sound like the writing of a composer who was adding in a letter a few days later, “Pray to God that my opera may be successful.”  The opera was successful, and the Pope gave him a knighthood; and he was only fourteen years old!

Perhaps this mysterious sweetheart is the same one he alludes to later as Annamindl, and concerning whom he sends his sister such solemn messages as these: 

“Don’t, I entreat, forget about the one other, where no other can ever be.”

“Say to Fraulein W. von Moelk that I rejoice at the thought of Salzburg, in the hope that I may again receive the same kind of present, for the minuets which was bestowed on me at a similar concert.  She knows all about it.”

“Carissima Sorella,—­Spero che voi sarete stata dalla Signora, che voi gia sapete.”

“My dearest Sister,—­I entreat you not to forget before your journey, to perform your promise, that is, to make a certain visit.  I have my reasons for this.  Pray present my kind regards in that quarter, but in the most impressive and tender manner,—­the most tender; and, oh,—­but I need not be in such anxiety.  I beg my compliments to Roxalana, who is to drink tea this evening with the Sultan.  All sorts of pretty speeches to Madlle Mizerl; she must not doubt my love.  I have her constantly before my eyes in her fascinating neglige.  I have seen many pretty girls here, but not one whose beauty can be compared with hers.”  The daughter of Doctor Barisani, the family physician, was for a time his heart’s queen.  Later Rosa Cannabich was “the magnet.”  And Wendling’s daughter paid her visit to his heart’s best room.