The last account we have of him says: “It is impossible for me to describe with what an expression of infinite wretchedness his devoted wife cast herself on her knees and called on the Almighty for aid.” She threw herself on his bed, that she might die of the same sickness, as if the cause of his death was some accidental disease. The three medical opinions assigned each a different cause for Mozart’s premature death—inflammation of the brain, purple fever and dropsy!
The people walked about his house in the Rauhenstein’gasse in crowds and wept. The poem of the order of Free Masons on the occasion refers, in touching terms, to the way in which he carried assistance to many a poor widow’s hut. The owner of the art-cabinet for whom the two fantasias in F minor were written, came and took an impression of his “pale, dead face” in plaster of Paris. The two sublime funeral odes were now made to serve as his own mausoleum.
Van Swieten took charge of his burial. But as he left only sixty guldens, a common grave had to be selected for his body; and thus it happens that we do not know to-day where Mozart’s last resting place is. When Constance, sick and sorrowful, went to the churchyard, some time after the grave-digger had been replaced by another, who could not point out where all that was mortal of our artist lay. Not a friend followed his bier to the cemetery. All turned back at the gate, on account of the bad weather. Mozart’s skull, however, was saved, and is preserved in Vienna. The churchyard keeper’s son secretly abstracted it from the grave.
As the parting words of our great artist, who, spite of all the sorrows he had to bear, preserved, throughout a cheerful, joyous nature, we may cite the following lines from a note of his, written near the close of his life—lines eloquently indicative of his sweet composure during his last days. They run thus: “Dear sir,” he replies to the admonitions of a friend—the original autograph, in Italian, is preserved in London—“willingly would I follow your advice, but how can I do it? My brain is distracted. It is with difficulty that I can collect my thoughts, and I cannot dismiss the picture of that unknown man from my mind. He is ever before me, praying for, urging me for, demanding that Requiem. I continue working because work does not exhaust me as much as the absence of employment. I know by my feelings that my hour has come. It is striking even now. I am in the region of death. I have reached my end, without having reaped the pleasure my talent should have brought me. And yet life was so beautiful! My career opened under such happy auspices; but one cannot change his destiny. No one can fix the number of his days. We must be resigned and do what Providence decrees.”
“Wir wandeln durch des Tones Macht
Froh durch des Todes duestre Nacht.”
Thus gravely and solemnly sing the soulfull and ideally transfigured lovers in the Magic Flute—Mozart’s own confession. It is the expression of the new and deep spring of life given to humanity in his music; and Mozart remained to his latest breath a consecrated priest of the purifying and sanctifying influence of his own melodies. His creations will live as long as humanity clings to the life of its own soul, and seeks higher nutriment for that life.
THE END.
TALES FROM FOREIGN TONGUES,
COMPRISING