will always be heard in this _Requiem_. That language is its very soul. We are rapidly approaching the end. The funeral bell is already tolling. Melancholy is the last picture in the life of an artist who never had an equal. Constance observed the growing infirmity and melancholy of her beloved husband with increasing alarm. She did all in her power to take him away from his work and to brighten him up by cheerful society. But Mozart, who was wont to be so social, was turned in upon himself, depressed, and could give only wandering answers to the questions put to him. She rode out into the open air with him. Nature had always had the effect of relieving and cheering him, so that he worked best traveling, when he insisted on having his “portefeuille,” as he called his leather case filled with music paper, in the side-fob of the carriage, at hand. They rode out in this manner, one beautiful November day, into the _Prater_. The aspect of dying nature and the falling of the leaves suggested to him thoughts of the end of all things. He now began to speak of death, and said, with tears in his eyes: “I know very well I am writing the _Requiem_ for myself. I am too conscious of myself. Some one must have poisoned me; I cannot rid myself of that thought.” His utter debility without any noticeable external cause readily suggested that suspicion. He could not imagine that his strength had been exhausted by sheer intellectual labor. And then, had not care and sorrow gnawed at his vitals for years? Constance was exceedingly alarmed, and succeeded in getting the score of the _Requiem_ from him. She consulted a physician, who recommended complete rest. This had so favorable an effect, in a short time, that Mozart was able to write the cantate _Das Lob der Freundschaft_--“the praise of friendship”--for a newly established lodge, and, shortly afterwards, to direct its production himself. The success of the work,--which itself bears internal evidence to a feeling of greater calmness and cheerfulness in its author--had a refreshing and comforting effect upon him. He now declared his suspicions that he had been poisoned, the effect of his ill-health, and demanded the _Requiem_ back. But a few days later, he again fell a victim to his melancholy feelings, and his strength left him. “I feel that I shall soon have done with music,” he said one morning to the faithful person who had once surprised him waltzing about his room with Constance, gave him back his wine and made an appointment to meet him next morning on some matters of business. When the latter reached the threshold of Mozart’s house, on the following day, he was met by the servant maid with the news that her master had been taken seriously sick during the night. Mozart himself looked at him fixedly from his bed, and said: “Nothing to-day, Joseph. To-day we have to do with doctors and apothecaries.”