and settled upon the hearth, but
we ought not to forget that both Wolfgang and Constanze had always been
poor; that they were used to poverty, and were light-hearted in its
presence. When they had no money to buy fuel, they were found dancing
together to keep warm. Surely, for two such hearts, poverty was only a
detail, and could in no sense be counted of sufficient weight to
counterbalance the affection each found in each.

As for Mozart's career we must feel that no amount of wealth would have
availed against his improvidence and his extravagance in the small way
in which fate permitted him to be extravagant. Nor could a life of
bachelorhood or a life with some woman married for money conceivably
have made him produce greater compositions--for no greater compositions
than those he produced during his married life have ever been produced
by any composer under any circumstances. Let us then read without
conviction such accounts as we may find tending to belittle the goodness
or cheapen the virtues of Constanze or of Mozart.

The Webers had lived at Vienna in a house called Auge Gottes, and Mozart
used to refer to his elopement as "Die Entfuehrung aus dem Auge Gottes,"
as a pun on the name of the opera that had made his marriage possible,
"Die Entfuehrung aus dem Serail." It is a curious coincidence that the
name of the principal character of this opera was Constanze, and that
she was a model of devotion through all trials. Once away from the
wrangling mother-in-law, the young couple enjoyed domestic bliss to the
height. Later, mother Weber seems to have reformed and to have become a
welcome guest in Mozart's house, where Aloysia herself became also a
cherished friend.

Nothing could exceed the tenderness of the lovers for each other. It
continued to the last. Constanze was so watchful of him that she cut up
his meat at dinner when his mind was on his compositions, lest he might
cut himself. She used to read aloud to him and tell him stories and hear
his improvisations and insist upon their being written out for
permanence. While the wife was showing all this solicitude, the husband,
genius though he was, was showing equal tenderness to the wife.

All Vienna gossiped about his devotion. When she was ill, he was the
most assiduous of nurses, and on one occasion got so into the habit of
putting his fingers to his lips and saying "Psst!" to any one who
entered the room where she was sleeping, that, on one occasion, on b