His final sickness attacked the composer while laboring at the requiem.  The musical world was ringing with the fame of his last opera.  To the dying man was brought the offer of the rich appointment of organist of St. Stephen’s Cathedral.  Most flattering propositions were made him by eager managers, who had become thoroughly awake to his genius when it was too late.  The great Mozart was dying in the very prime of his youth and his powers, when success was in his grasp and the world opening wide its arms to welcome his glorious gifts with substantial recognition; but all too late; for he was doomed to die in his spring-tide, though “a spring mellow with all the fruits of autumn.”

The unfinished requiem lay on the bed, and his last efforts were to imitate some peculiar instrumental effects, as he breathed out his life in the arms of his wife and his friend Suessmaier.

The epilogue to this life-drama is one of the saddest in the history of art:  a pauper funeral for one of the world’s greatest geniuses.  “It was late one winter afternoon,” says an old record, “before the coffin was deposited on the side aisles on the south side of St. Stephen’s.  Van Swieten, Salieri, Suessmaier, and two unknown musicians were the only persons present besides the officiating priest and the pall-bearers.  It was a terribly inclement day; rain and sleet came down fast; and an eye-witness describes how the little band of mourners stood shivering in the blast, with their umbrellas up, round the hearse, as it left the door of the church.  It was then far on in the dark cold December afternoon, and the evening was fast closing in before the solitary hearse had passed the Stubenthor, and reached the distant graveyard of St. Marx, in which, among the ‘third class,’ the great composer of the ‘G minor Symphony’ and the ‘Requiem’ found his resting-place.  By this time the weather had proved too much for all the mourners; they had dropped off one by one, and Mozart’s body was accompanied only by the driver of the carriage.  There had been already two pauper funerals that day—­one of them a midwife—­and Mozart was to be the third in the grave and the uppermost.

“When the hearse drew up in the slush and sleet at the gate of the graveyard, it was welcomed by a strange pair, Franz Harruschka, the assistant grave-digger, and his mother Katharina, known as ‘Frau Katha,’ who filled the quaint office of official mendicant to the place.

“The old woman was the first to speak:  ‘Any coaches or mourners coming?’

“A shrug from the driver of the hearse was the only response.

“‘Whom have you got there, then?’ continued she.

“‘A band-master,’ replied the other.

“’A musician? they’re a poor lot; then I’ve no more money to look for to-day.  It is to be hoped we shall have better luck in the morning.’

“To which the driver said, with a laugh:  ’I’m devilish thirsty, too—­not a kreutzer of drink-money have I had.’