Nor were other entertainments and enjoyments altogether wanting. He heard Aloysia Lange, whose beautiful voice had once been a source of anxiety to him, in Gluck's "Pilgrims of Mecca" and in Grétry's "Zemire and Azor" (her favourite part): "She sang and played admirably on both occasions." He visited the Baroness Waldstädten, whose acquaintance had gratified him so much, in the convent of Neuburg, where she was then staying; but we do not hear anything of the future course of their friendship.
It is an important fact, and one of grave significance in the case of a man of L. Mozart's tone of mind and thought, that he was led by his son's influence to enter the order of Freemasonry. The strong national feeling which existed in him, side by side with devotion to the tenets of his church, regulating his conception of moral duties, and influencing all his critical judgments, makes it conceivable that he should seek for enlightenment through an association which numbered among its members some of the most considerable and highly esteemed of his friends. I am not aware how far he was satisfied by the disclosures made to him, nor whether he remained an active member of the order after his return to Salzburg; his daughter saw grounds for believing that his subsequent correspondence with Wolfgang turned mainly on topics connected with Freemasonry. From Vienna Leopold Mozart travelled by way of Munich, where he had a pleasant visit, back to Salzburg. There he found awaiting him an announcement from his gracious master MOZART'S FAMILY AND FRIENDS. that, as he had already exceeded his six weeks' leave of absence, if he did not report himself before the middle of May, "no salary should be paid to him until further notice." We can enter into the complaints he made to his daughter of the dulness of his life in Salzburg. He never saw his son again. A faint hope, expressed to Marianne (September 16, 1785), that Wolfgang, not having written for a considerable time, meant to surprise him with a visit, was not fulfilled; he himself, accompanied by Heinrich Marchand, paid a flying visit to Munich in February, 1787, but did not go on to Vienna. His paternal pride was gratified by the intelligence of Wolfgang's brilliant success in Prague; and he did not neglect to inform his daughter when Pater Edmund, who had been on a visit to Vienna, declared on his return that Wolfgang had the reputation of being the first of living musicians (February 3, 1786). He watched with anxious sympathy over the course of his son's worldly affairs, but refused with consistent severity any substantial support, the right to which Wolfgang had clearly forfeited by his independent attitude; paternal advice, in its most unsparing form, was always at his service. Leopold Mozart transferred to his daughter the tenderness and active participation which was now denied to him in his intercourse with his distant son. Thus he remained to the end true to his principles, but not untouched by the weakness and suffering of old age; he answers one of Marianne's anxious inquiries after his health (February 24, 1787):—
An old man must not expect anything like perfect health; he is always failing, and loses strength just as a young man gains it. One must just patch oneself up as long as one can. We may hope for a little improvement from the better weather now. You will, of course, find me very much thinner, but, after all, that is of no consequence.
He had still a pleasure to come in the visit of the Storaces and Kelly; Mdlle. Storace had packed up Wolfgang's letter intrusted to her so carefully, that she could not get at it, but verbal intercourse with such intimate friends of his son must have been ample compensation for this. Soon afterwards he fell ill, on hearing which Wolfgang wrote as follows (April 4, 1787):—
ILLNESS AND DEATH OF L. MOZART, 1787.
I have this moment heard what has quite overwhelmed me—all the more since your last letter allowed me to imagine that you were quite well—and now I hear that you are really ill! How earnestly I long for reassuring news from your own hand, I do not need to tell you, and I confidently hope for it, although I have learnt to make it my custom to imagine the worst of everything. Since death (properly speaking) is the true end of life, I have accustomed myself during the last two years to so close a contemplation of this, our best and truest friend, that he possesses no more terrors for me; nothing but peace and consolation! and I thank God for enabling me to discern in death the key to our true blessedness. I never lie down in bed without remembering that perhaps, young as I am, I may never see another day; and yet no one who knows me can say that I am melancholy or fanciful. For this blessing I thank God daily, and desire nothing more than to share it with my fellow men. I wrote to you on this point in the letter which Mdlle. Storace failed to deliver ä propos of the death of my dearest friend Count von Hatzfeld; he was thirty-one—just my own age; I do not mourn for him, but for myself, and all those who knew him as I did. I hope and pray that even as I write this you may be already better; but if, contrary to all expectation, this should not be the case, I conjure you by all that we hold most sacred, not to hide the truth from me, but to write at once, in order that I may be in your arms with the least possible delay. But I hope soon to receive a reassuring letter from yourself, and in this hope,
I, with my wife and Carl, kiss your hands a thousand times, and am ever,—Your most dutiful son.
This letter puts the seal on the beautiful, genuinely human relations existing between the father and son; in the presence of death, they stand face to face like men, calm in the assurance that true love and earnest efforts after truth and goodness reach beyond the limits of our earthly existence. Leopold Mozart apparently recovered from this attack, and wrote to his daughter on May 26, that he should expect her and her family to spend Whitsuntide with him; but this pleasure was denied to him. On May 28, 1787, a sudden death[ 16 ] ended the career of a man who had accomplished, by means of a singular union of shrewdness and industry, of love and severity, the difficult task of educating a child of genius into an artist.
The personal relationships which resulted from Mozart's marriage not only affected his mental and social condition, but had also considerable influence on him as a composer; it is indispensable therefore to take them into account in any consideration of his artistic career.