by the accompanying letter that when Wolfgang
makes new friends he would give his life for them. It is true that she
does sing incomparably; still, we ought not to lose sight of our own
interests. I write this quite secretly while he is at dinner, for I
don't wish him to know it."

Five days afterwards Mozart recurs to the subject, referring to a friend
who married for money and commenting:

"I hope never to marry in this way; I wish to make my wife happy, but
not to become rich by her means.... The nobility must not marry from
love or inclination, but from interest, and all kinds of other
considerations. It would not at all suit a grandee to love his wife
after she had done her duty, and brought in to the world an heir to his
property. But we poor humble people are privileged not only to choose a
wife who loves us, and whom we love, but we may, can, and do take such a
one, because we are neither noble, nor high-born, nor rich, but, on the
contrary, lowly, humble, and poor; we therefore need no wealthy wife,
for our wealth, being in our heads, dies with us, and these no man can
deprive us of, unless he cut them off, in which case we need nothing
more."

Next week he writes again asking his father to concern himself for the
Webers. The poor father had been imploring Wolfgang to go to Paris for
fame and fortune's sake. Now he finds him so far from being willing to
pursue his own promising career, that he wishes to give up all thought
of Paris and subordinate his genius to the task of boosting into fame
the daughter of a poverty-stricken music-copyist!

Leopold answers in the violent tone he could adopt on occasions, and
tries to distract his son's attention by appealing to his ambition. He
asks him to decide whether he wishes to become "a commonplace artist
whom the world will forget, or a celebrated capellmeister of whom
posterity will read years after in books,--whether, infatuated with a
pretty face you one day breathe your last on a straw sack, your wife and
children in a state of starvation, or, after a well-spent Christian
life, you die in honour and independence and your family well provided
for.... Get to Paris without delay, take your place by the side of
really great people. _Aut Caesar ant nihil_."

Little the father could have realised how much truth there was to be in
the dark side of his prophecy; and that, too, in spite of the fact that
his son took his advice. Leaving Aloysia behind, the son and his m