Poverty came with all its vicissitudes and settled upon the hearth, but we ought not to forget that both Wolfgang and Constanze had always been poor; that they were used to poverty, and were light-hearted in its presence.  When they had no money to buy fuel, they were found dancing together to keep warm.  Surely, for two such hearts, poverty was only a detail, and could in no sense be counted of sufficient weight to counterbalance the affection each found in each.

As for Mozart’s career we must feel that no amount of wealth would have availed against his improvidence and his extravagance in the small way in which fate permitted him to be extravagant.  Nor could a life of bachelorhood or a life with some woman married for money conceivably have made him produce greater compositions—­for no greater compositions than those he produced during his married life have ever been produced by any composer under any circumstances.  Let us then read without conviction such accounts as we may find tending to belittle the goodness or cheapen the virtues of Constanze or of Mozart.

The Webers had lived at Vienna in a house called Auge Gottes, and Mozart used to refer to his elopement as “Die Entfuehrung aus dem Auge Gottes,” as a pun on the name of the opera that had made his marriage possible, “Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail.”  It is a curious coincidence that the name of the principal character of this opera was Constanze, and that she was a model of devotion through all trials.  Once away from the wrangling mother-in-law, the young couple enjoyed domestic bliss to the height.  Later, mother Weber seems to have reformed and to have become a welcome guest in Mozart’s house, where Aloysia herself became also a cherished friend.

Nothing could exceed the tenderness of the lovers for each other.  It continued to the last.  Constanze was so watchful of him that she cut up his meat at dinner when his mind was on his compositions, lest he might cut himself.  She used to read aloud to him and tell him stories and hear his improvisations and insist upon their being written out for permanence.  While the wife was showing all this solicitude, the husband, genius though he was, was showing equal tenderness to the wife.

All Vienna gossiped about his devotion.  When she was ill, he was the most assiduous of nurses, and on one occasion got so into the habit of putting his fingers to his lips and saying “Psst!” to any one who entered the room where she was sleeping, that, on one occasion, on being spoken to in the street, he involuntarily placed his finger on his lips and gave the warning signal.  When he was called away from home early, before she was awake, he would leave such a note for her as this:  “Guten Morgen, liebes Weibchen, Ich wuensche, dass Du gut geschlafen habest” etc., or, as it runs in English:  “Good morning, my darling wife!  I hope that you slept well, that you were undisturbed, that you will not rise too early, that you will not catch cold, nor stoop too much, nor overstrain yourself, nor scold your servants, nor stumble over the threshold of the adjoining room.  Spare yourself all household worries till I come back.  May no evil befall you!  I shall be home at—­o’clock punctually.”