The influence of heredity has a twofold illustration in this story. The musical talent of Weber and, indeed, the general bent of his artistic predilections were an inheritance. An ardent devotion to music and the drama can be traced back a century in the family from which he sprung. The family belonged to the minor nobility of Austria. Of the tastes and inclinations of the first Freiherr von Weber, who was endowed with the title in 1622, nothing is known. But a brother, who had taken up a residence in Suabia, probably after the loss of the family estates in the Thirty Years' War, was musical. He was the ancestor of Fridolin Weber, who, in turn, was the father of several daughters who would have merited a paragraph in the annals of music had they not won a page through the circumstance that Mozart fell in love with one, Aloysia, and married another, Constance. Franz Anton von Weber, a brother of this Fridolin, was the father of Carl Maria, who through Constance became cousin by marriage to Mozart. The brothers, though many other things besides, during the latter portion of their existence were, for the purpose of gaining a livelihood, musicians. Fridolin, who had dropped the "von" from his name when Mozart met him in Mannheim, was reduced to the position of a sort of general utility man in the Court Theatre; Franz Anton, who clung to the sign of nobility and conveyed other titles to himself to which he had less right, enjoyed the distinction of being one of the best viola players of his time and was also an admirable performer upon the double-bass. He even ventured upon the sea of composition with some songs with pianoforte accompaniment, which frail craft bore him up for a considerable time.