171. "Now as to my mode of life: As soon as you were gone I played two games of billiards with Herr von Mozart who wrote the opera for Schickaneder's theatre; then I sold my nag for fourteen ducats; then I had Joseph call my primus and bring a black coffee, to which I smoked a glorious pipe of tobacco….At 5:30 I went out of the door and took my favorite promenade through the Glacis to the theatre. What do I see? What do I smell? It is the primus with the cutlet Gusto! I eat to your health. It has just struck 11 o'clock. Perhaps you are already asleep. Sh! sh! sh! I do not want to wake you."
"Saturday, the 8th. You ought to have seen me yesterday at supper! I could not find the old dishes and therefore produced a set as white as snow-flowers and had the wax candelabra in front of me."
(Vienna, October 7, 1791, to his wife, who was taking the waters at Baden. Mozart was fond of billiards and often played alone as on this occasion. He was careful of his health and had been advised by his physician to ride; but he could not acquire a taste for the exercise—Hence the sale of his horse. The primus was his valet, a servant found in every Viennese household at the time. Out of the door through which he stepped on beginning his walk to the theatre his funeral procession passed two months later.)
172. "I have done more work during the ten days that I have lived here than in two months in any other lodgings; and if it were not that I am too often harassed by gloomy thoughts which I can dispel only by force, I could do still more, for I live pleasantly, comfortably and cheaply."
(Vienna, June 27, 1788, to his friend Puchberg.)
173. "I have no conveniences for writing there (i.e. at Baden), and I want to avoid embarrassments as much as possible. Nothing is more enjoyable than a quiet life and to obtain that one must be industrious. I am glad to be that."
(Vienna, October 8, 1791, to his wife at Baden. Mozart probably refers to work on his "Requiem." He says further: "If I had had nothing to do I would have gone with you to spend the week.")
174. "Now the babe against my will, yet with my consent, has been provided with a wet nurse. It was always my determination that, whether she was able to do so or not, my wife was not to suckle her child; but neither was the child to guzzle the milk of another woman. I want it brought up on water as I and my sister were, but…"
(Vienna, June 8, 1783, to his father, the day after his first child was born. The "Dear, thick, fat little fellow" died soon after.)
175. "Young as I am, I never go to bed without thinking that possibly I may not be alive on the morrow; yet not one of the many persons who know me can say that I am morose or melancholy. For this happy disposition I thank my Creator daily, and wish with all my heart that it were shared by all my fellows."