In the beginning of September 1787, composer and poet were in Prague. Constance also had traveled with them. She had to see that no disturbance from without interfered with the workings of our artist’s laborious mind. Personal intercourse with the singers increased his intellectual activity. The first singer who took the part of Don Giovanni was lauded to the deaf Beethoven, almost forty years later, as a “fiery Italian.” The female singers were not by any means remarkable. Yet it was said that our artist had been guilty, during this sojourn in Prague, of all kinds of gay adventures; and this while he was writing himself to a friend in Vienna: “Is there not an infinite difference between the pleasure of a fickle, whimsical love and the bliss of a really rational one?” In after years, his acquaintances remembered the happy hours they had spent with him in Prague. He played at nine-pins with them in a wine-garden, which is now adorned with his bust, while at the same time he wrote out his score at the table in the place. And in the evening before the performance he was exceedingly cheerful and full of jokes. Finally, Constance told him it was eleven o’clock, that the overture was not yet written. At his home, with his glass of punch, such as he liked, he proceeded to perform the task which was so irksome to him. He had the work long since finished in his head. He had even already played it as well as two other drafts of it for his friends. On this account, Constance, in order to keep his thoughts flowing, was obliged to tell stories to him. These were fairy tales, like Aladdin’s Wonderful Lamp, and Cinderella. Mozart frequently laughed over them until the tears came. Fatigue, however, overpowered him at last, and his wife allowed him to sleep a few hours. Yet the copyists received their work in the early morning. He had, moreover, according to his own confession to the director of the orchestra, never allowed himself to be prevented from producing something excellent for Prague, and at the same time assured him, that he had not acquired his art easily. No one, he said, had been more industrious to acquire it than he, and it would be hard to find a celebrated master whom he had not diligently studied.