He did not leave his bed any more after this. It was not long before worse symptoms appeared. His consciousness did not leave him for a moment. Neither did his loving sweetness and kindness. But the thought of his wife and children filled his heart with melancholy. New and better prospects were now before him. The Hungarian nobility and some rich Amsterdam gentlemen, lovers of music, asked him to write compositions for them, in consideration of a large annual honorarium. And then there was the success of the _Magic Flute_, in which he was deeply interested. “Now the first act is over! Now they have come to the place _Dir, grosse Koenigin der Nacht_”--he was wont to say in the evening with the watch at hand. The day before his death, he exclaimed: “Constance, if I could only hear my dear _Magic Flute_ once more!” And he hummed away the air of the “bird-catcher,” in a voice that was scarcely audible. But he had the _Requiem_ still more at heart, and he had so far sketched its principal features, that his pupil, Suessmayer who had also written the recitative for Titus was subsequently able to complete it. During the afternoon that preceded the last night of his life, he had the score of the _Requiem_ brought to him in bed. The Tamino of Schikaneder’s troop took the soprano, Sarastro the bass, his brother-in-law, Hofer the tenor, and Mozart, as usual, the alto. They sang until they reached the _Lacrimosa_ when Mozart burst into tears and put the score aside. The thought of his approaching end and of God’s all-merciful, eternal love, filled his heart with an unspeakable feeling which made it overflow with a melancholy joy. This is plainly evident from the infinitely mild, conciliating tones in which Mozart has described that day of tears on which eternal grace and goodness are to make compensation for the eternal guilt of men. His sister-in-law, Sophie, came in the evening. He said to her: “Ah, my dear, good Sophie, how glad I am you are here! You must stay to-night, and see me die. I have the death-taste on my tongue. I have the odor of death in my nostrils. And who will then help my dear Constance?” Constance hereupon asked her sister to go for a clergyman, but it was no easy matter to induce one to come. The patient was a Free Mason, and the order of Free Masons was opposed to many of the institutions of the Church.