This was certainly one of the brightest days in Mozart’s life. He had reached the climax of success. In the applause of the multitude, he saw a reflection of his own intellectual features which called that applause forth. Strange thoughts now possessed his soul. Feelings never felt before stirred within him. When a person has reached a height like that now obtained by Mozart, he is in a position to embrace in his horizon all that lies below and around him. It was the first time that his life-sparkling mind did this, but we shall see that it did so now. The incessant intrigues of his opponents and enemies--intrigues so violent and great, that, when he died, it was rumored he had been poisoned--devoured his life like a vulture, and ended it before his time. The consciousness of this first came to him with all its melancholy amid the infinite jubilation we have just described, in the midst of all this joy and recognition of his genius. He now, for the first time, had a perception of life’s close, of life’s tragic play, as reflected in _Don Giovanni_; and this was the result of his journey to Prague. For when, in the overflowing joy of his heart, Mozart said that he would like to write an opera expressly for such a public, the director of the theatre, Bondini, took him at his word, and closed the contract with him for the following autumn, at one hundred ducats. Da Ponte relates that, on this occasion, he proposed the subject-matter himself. He had perceived that Mozart’s genius required a sublime and many-sided poem. And, indeed, this, like _Faust_, was a subject-matter on which writers of all nations had long labored. _Don Giovanni_ represents the indestructible instinct of life, as _Faust_ does the instinct of knowledge, showing how that instinct is ever annihilating and reproducing itself. The hero is given up to the fullest enjoyment of life regardless of consequences. Cheerfully and freely he surrenders himself to it. No shackles bind him. Opposition only adds to his strength. But this very wantonness is, at last, the cause of his ruin. This was the conclusion of the whole, extended, original Spanish play chosen by the poet of the libretto.