“How will you receive me?  In Heaven’s name, alone.  Let no one disturb my joy of looking again upon my wife and my children, my dearest and my best...  Thank God! the end of all is fast approaching.”

The end of all was fast approaching.  He sent his friends out to purchase souvenirs of unhappy London, as gifts for his family.  He was so impatient to be off that he would listen to no advice to postpone his starting.

“I must go back to my own, I must!” he sobbed incessantly.  “Let me see them once more—­and then God’s will be done.”  The attempt appeared impossible to all.  With great unwillingness he yielded to his friend’s request to have a consultation of physicians.  “Be it so,” he answered.  “But come of it what may, I go!”

His only thought, his only word, was “Home!” On the 2d of June he wrote his last letter to his beloved,—­the last lines his hand ever traced.  “What a joy, my own dear darling, your letter gave me!  What a happiness to me to know that you are well! ...  As this letter requires no answer, it will be but a short one.  What a comfort it is not to have to answer...  God bless you all and keep you well!  Oh, were I but amongst you all again!  I kiss you with all my heart and soul, my dearest one!  Preserve all your love for me, and think with pleasure on him who loves you above all, your Carl.”

He was to leave London on the 6th of June; on the night of the 4th he could talk to his friends only of their kindness and of his eagerness to be home.  To a friend, who stayed to help him through the painful ordeal of undressing, he murmured his thanks and said, “Now let me sleep.”

The next morning, when they came to his room, he had been dead for hours.  London was full of words of regret for the man whose music had added so much to the beauty and cheerfulness of the world.  A great benefit for his family was arranged, but fate would not cease mocking him in his grave,—­the receipts hardly equalled the expenses!

A committee petitioned the Dean of Westminster to allow the funeral to be held in the Abbey.  The courteous answer of regret reminded the committee that Von Weber was a Roman Catholic!  The musicians volunteered, however, to give him a splendid funeral, and at least music was not wanting when his body was lowered into the grave in an alien land.  Von Weber’s son, Max, describes how the news was sent to Caroline by Von Weber’s devoted friend, Fuerstenau: 

“It was the death-warrant of the purest wedded bliss that had ever made two mortals happy; it was nigh a fatal cup of poison to one of the noblest hearts of womankind:  it told two little blooming boys that they were orphaned.  No wonder that Fuerstenau had not the courage to address Caroline von Weber herself:  his letter had been sent to her dearest friend, Fraeulein von Hanmann.  The sad messenger of death went down to Kosterwitz, the letter in hand.