224. "If you, worthy brother, do not help me out of my present predicament I shall lose my credit and honor, the only things which I care now to preserve."

(Vienna, June 27, 1788, to Puchberg, who had sent him 200 florins ten days before. Puchberg was a brother Mason.)

225. "How I felt then! How I felt then! Such things will never return. Now we are sunk in the emptiness of everyday life."

(Remarked on remembering that at the age of fourteen he had composed a "Requiem" at the command of Empress Maria Theresa and had conducted it as chapelmaster of the imperial orchestra.)

226. "Did I not tell you that I was composing this 'Requiem' for myself?"

(Said on the day of his death while still working on the "Requiem" for which he had received so mysterious a commission. The work had been ordered by a Count Walsegg, who made pretensions to musical composition, and who wished to palm it off as a work of his own, written in memory of his wife. Mozart never knew him.)

227. "I shall not last much longer. I am sure that I have been poisoned! I can not rid myself of this thought."

(Mozart believed that he had been poisoned by one of his Italian rivals, his suspicion falling most strongly on Salieri. ["As regards Mozart, Salieri cannot escape censure, for though the accusation of having been the cause of his death has been long ago disproved, it is more than possible that he was not displeased at the removal of so formidable a rival. At any rate, though he had it in his power to influence the Emperor in Mozart's favor, he not only neglected to do so, but even intrigued against him as Mozart himself relates in a letter to his friend Puchberg. After his death, however, Salieri befriended his son, and gave him a testimonial which secured him his first appointment." C.F. Pohl, in "Grove's Dictionary of Music and Musicians.">[)

228. "Stay with me to-night; you must see me die. I have long had the taste of death on my tongue, I smell death, and who will stand by my Constanze, if you do not stay?"

(Reported by his sister-in-law, Sophie, sister of Constanze.)