Dresden in July, Caroline's health was undermined
by the emotions of the Berlin triumph, and it was necessary for her to
be taken to Switzerland, where Carl was compelled to leave her. An
accident in crossing the Elbe led him to write his will, leaving
Caroline everything without reserve, and his dying curse upon any one
who should disturb his wishes.

Now consumption began to fasten its claws more deeply on him, and when
his wife returned she found him constantly racked with cough and fever.
One day he saw the first fatal spot of blood upon his handkerchief; he
turned pale and sighed: "God's will be done."

From that moment neither his conviction that he was doomed to an early
death, nor his courage to die pluckily, ever left him. When "Der
Freischuetz" was given in Dresden, Caroline was ill at home. Carl
arranged a courier service by which he received, after every scene, news
of his wife. In February of the next year, he was compelled to leave
Dresden; he placed in his wife's hands a sealed letter only to be opened
in case of his death. This letter gave a complete account of all his
affairs, and a last expression of his immense love for her. On his many
tours, he met almost uninterrupted triumph, but as he wrote to Caroline:

"I would rather be in my still chamber with you, my beloved life.
Without you all pride is shorn of its splendour; my only real joy can be
in that which gives you joy too."

From now on he spent a large part of his time away from her, always
tormented to the last degree by homesickness, always harrowed by the
fear that he might die out of the reach of his adored wife and two
children, and never feeling that he had laid by money enough to leave
them free of the danger of want, after he should have drifted into the
grave that yawned just before his weary feet.

It is hard to find in story or history a more pitiful struggle against
fate and the frustration of every deep desire than the last days of Carl
Maria von Weber, hurrying from triumph to triumph, and dying as he
jolted along his way, or stood bowing with hollow heart before
uproarious multitudes. Homesickness grew to be a positive frenzy with
him.

"They carry me in triumph," he wrote to Caroline: "they watch for every
wink to do me kindnesses. But I feel I can only be happy there, where I
can hear my lambs bleat, and their mother low, and can beat my dog, or
turn away my maids, if they are at all too troublesome."

In 1825, Christmas