Later she rejoined him, and at Hamburg, the oyster entered once more into Weber’s domestic career.  The Brunetti had cured him of his love for her by her inordinate fondness for bivalves.  Caroline, on the other hand, hated them.  But Weber said: 

“There can be no true sympathy between us while you detest a food I relish.  For the love of me, swallow this oyster.”

The first three were a severe trial, but, as the French might say, “Ce n’est pas que la premiere huitre qui coute.”  Afterward Weber would groan, “Alas, why did I ever teach you the trick?”

In 1821, there rose a famous operatic war between Spontini and Weber at Berlin.  Caroline was prostrated with terror.  Spontini’s “Olympic” was given first with enormous success, and “Der Freischuetz,” in which Caroline had had so large a share, and which meant so much to the two, was forced into a dramatic comparison.  In spite of a somewhat dubious beginning, the first night was one of the greatest ovations a musician has ever lived to see.  In the midst of the tempestuous applause, every one looked for the composer, who was “sitting in a dark corner of his wife’s box and kissing away her tears of joy.”

When they returned to Dresden in July, Caroline’s health was undermined by the emotions of the Berlin triumph, and it was necessary for her to be taken to Switzerland, where Carl was compelled to leave her.  An accident in crossing the Elbe led him to write his will, leaving Caroline everything without reserve, and his dying curse upon any one who should disturb his wishes.

Now consumption began to fasten its claws more deeply on him, and when his wife returned she found him constantly racked with cough and fever.  One day he saw the first fatal spot of blood upon his handkerchief; he turned pale and sighed:  “God’s will be done.”

From that moment neither his conviction that he was doomed to an early death, nor his courage to die pluckily, ever left him.  When “Der Freischuetz” was given in Dresden, Caroline was ill at home.  Carl arranged a courier service by which he received, after every scene, news of his wife.  In February of the next year, he was compelled to leave Dresden; he placed in his wife’s hands a sealed letter only to be opened in case of his death.  This letter gave a complete account of all his affairs, and a last expression of his immense love for her.  On his many tours, he met almost uninterrupted triumph, but as he wrote to Caroline: 

“I would rather be in my still chamber with you, my beloved life.  Without you all pride is shorn of its splendour; my only real joy can be in that which gives you joy too.”

From now on he spent a large part of his time away from her, always tormented to the last degree by homesickness, always harrowed by the fear that he might die out of the reach of his adored wife and two children, and never feeling that he had laid by money enough to leave them free of the danger of want, after he should have drifted into the grave that yawned just before his weary feet.