colaus von Nissen. He undertook the
education of her two boys, and won her hand. She lived with him in
Copenhagen till 1820, when she returned to Salzburg. The quaintness of
this affair should not blind us to the unusual depth of affection it
revealed. Constanze inspired even her new husband with such devotion to
Mozart's fame that Nissen wrote a biography of his predecessor in her
affections.

There cannot be many instances of a second husband writing a eulogistic
biography of the first, but Nissen wrote his with a candour and
enthusiasm that spoke volumes for his goodness and for that of
Constanze. He died, however, before the biography was completed, and
Constanze finished it herself. She includes in the publication a
portrait of Nissen and a tender tribute to his memory. Many of the most
beautiful anecdotes of Mozart's life we owe to Nissen's gentle
unjealousy, and Constanze could frankly sign herself "widow of
Staatsrath Nissen, previously widow of Mozart."

She includes an anonymous poem on Mozart's death, beginning:

"Wo ist dein Grab? Wo duften die Cypressen?"

Which is in its way evidence enough that she did not hold herself, or
her "indifference," responsible for the dingy entombment of this genius,
and the disappearance of his grave. As her last words to the public she
says: "May the reader accept this apologetic, this intimate
love-offering, in the spirit in which it is given. Salzburg, 1828."
What reader can refuse this sympathy to one who felt and gave so much to
one who craved sympathy as the very food of his soul?

When Constanze was elderly and the second time widowed, she was,
according to Crowest, visited by an English lady and her husband--an
eminent musician--both of whom were anxious to converse with the relict
of the great master. Notwithstanding the years that had passed, Frau
Nissen's enthusiasm for her first husband was far from extinguished. She
was much affected at the regard which the visitors showed for his
memory, and willingly entered into conversation about him.

"Mozart," she said, "loved all the arts and possessed a taste for most
of them. He could draw, and was an excellent dancer. He was generally
cheerful and in good humour; rarely melancholy, though sometimes
pensive. Indeed," she continued, "he was an angel on earth, and is one
in heaven now."

Constanze outlived her second husband by sixteen years, and died in
March, 1842, at the age of seventy-eight. Composers' widows li