anyone. They say it is from a disappointment in love. Oh, if I ever found fault with the Weber sisters for the fault of the one who treated me so poorly, I beg their pardon, for they are good, chaste girls, or at least the younger two are ... what the eldest is, heaven knows. I assure you I am quite safe from romantic intrigue. The thought of marriage now repels me. I want only to work, as work I must.
I am ever your most obedient son,
W A. Mozart
The reply came, written rapidly.
My dearest Son
I am most happy to hear of your success and have gratefully received the money you sent me, though, alas, it must go for old debts, and the underthings must wait.
One thing in your letter distressed me to my soul, and you know what it is. I do not like the idea of your living with the Webers. Did they not play about with you enough with their daughter; did you not lose your head over her? And what did she do but make herself the loose woman? But all of that family’s perfidy comes from the mother, whom your own darling, sainted mother felt to be untrustworthy. I must warn you, they will cheat you or entrap you in some way. They know the softness of your heart, which you wear on your sleeve. Adieu. I am going now to settle some debts. Send me a copy of the symphony if you can. And go regularly to confession and to mass. You used to go almost every day, I recall.
Your loving old father,
Leopold Mozart
Two days later he moved into a third-story room in the house, his windows looking out on the green dome of Peterskirche. Frau Weber welcomed him warmly. “That hussy, that treasonous girl!” she exclaimed as she unlocked his door with a large brass key. “That she behaved so poorly to me, to you, poor, dear Mozart. Well, you never know what treachery can lie in the hearts of the children we suckle.” She stood there with her jangling keys at her waist, smelling of baking. Her skirt hem was dusted with flour. His heart melted with gratitude as he unpacked his clothing and possessions, laying out on the table a small stack of paper to rule for music staves. It was a light room, with a bed, a washstand, and a pitcher for hot water, on which were painted alpine flowers and the words FROM OUR WANDERINGS, DEAR LORD, BRING US HOME.
Thus began his life in that house, a boarder among a handful of others. Constanze and Sophie looked at him, sometimes smiling as if they hoped some friendship between them might resume, yet he did little more than smile distantly in return. There were no more songs or games. He had neither the inclination nor the time for them.
He heard them whisper their sister’s name, though the rash young soprano herself never set foot within the doors. He knew when, a few months later, she gave birth, and that she had sent the little girl child to the country to be raised by a wet nurse, then returned to her singing with much success. He hurried through the rooms of the house as if rushing from her ghost, which he felt standing here and there, looking at him, mocking him. For a time he felt he could not remain, but to leave the house meant to leave the sound of her name, which he still craved; and so he stayed.
Constanze and Sophie could smell linseed oil and paint as they climbed the steps to their sister’s marital apartment, several streets from their own. It was a few months later, a bright June day. Aloysia’s husband, Joseph Lange, opened the door swiftly, as if he had been waiting behind it. He was a tall man in his middle twenties, with small teeth and a strong jaw, who now and then also acted in the theaters.
Shyly, the girls looked around the room. There was an air of sensuality about the carelessly squashed sofa pillows; a book thrown facedown on the floor; the easel, with its half-finished portrait of their sister in some operatic role, head tilted to the side, great eyes gazing intensely at the viewer. Behind a slightly ajar door, they could see the rumpled unmade bed; emerging from that door came Aloysia, also rumpled, wearing her husband’s dressing gown, which she had to hold up, for it was so long it