“Weber hated the king, of whose wild caprice and vices he witnessed daily scenes, before whose palace-gates he was obliged to slink bareheaded, and who treated him with unmerited ignominy.  He was wont, in thoughtless levity of youth, to forget the dangers he ran, and to answer the king with a freedom of tone which the autocrat was all unused to hear.  In turn he was detested by the monarch.

“The royal treatment roused young Carl Maria’s indignation to the utmost; and his irritation led him one day to a mad prank, which was nigh resulting in some years’ imprisonment in the fortress of Hohenasberg, or of Hohenhaufen.  Smarting under some foul indignity, he had just left the private apartment of the king, when an old woman met him in the passage, and asked him where she could find the room of the court washerwoman.  ‘There!’ said the reckless youth, pointing to the door of the royal cabinet.  The old woman entered, and was violently assailed by the king, who had a horror of old women; in her terror, she stammered out that a young gentleman who had just come out had informed her that there she would find the ‘royal washerwoman,’ The infuriated monarch guessed who was the culprit, and despatched an officer on the spot to arrest his brother’s secretary, and throw him into prison.

“To those who have any idea how foul a den was then a royal prison, it must appear almost marvellous that Carl Maria should have possessed sufficient equanimity to have occupied himself with his beloved art during his arrest.  But so it was.  He managed to procure a dilapidated old piano, put it in tune with consummate patience, by means of a common door-key, and actually, then and there, on the 14th of October, 1808, composed his well-known beautiful song, ’Ein steter Kampf ist unser Leben.’

“The storm passed over.  Prince Ludwig’s influence obtained the young man’s pardon and release.  But the insult was never forgotten by the king:  he took care to remember it at his own right time.  Nor had prison cured Carl Maria of his boyish desire to play tricks upon the hated monarch, when he conceived that he could do so without danger to himself.”

Carl proceeded to make himself an appropriate graduate of such a university of morals, and devoted himself to wine, women, and debts, with a small proportion of song.  He belonged to a society of young men, who called themselves by the gentle name of “Faust’s Ride to Hell.”  He now began also the composition of an opera, “Sylvana.”  This brought him into acquaintance with operatic people, and he fell under the charm of that “coquettish little serpent Margarethe Lang.”

“To stem such a passion, or even to have given it a legal form, would have been merely ridiculous and absurd in the eyes of the demoralised circle by which he was surrounded.  Gretchen possessed a little plump seductive form, was about twenty years of age, and, in addition to her undoubted musical talent, was endowed with a fund of gay, sprightly humour, wholly in sympathy with the youth’s own joyous nature.  She became the central point of all his life and aspirations.”