On the 17th of May, 1790, the composer of _Figaro_ and _Don Giovanni_ was obliged to write: “I have now two scholars. I would like to bring the number up to eight. Try to spread it abroad that I am giving lessons.” In the meantime, he finished at least three quartets for Frederick William I., and, through Swieten, received Handel’s _Alexander’s Feast_, and the _Ode for Saint Cecilia’s day_, to re-arrange. When Mozart saw that, on the occasion of the presence of the King of Naples, in September, 1790, he was passed over entirely, and that Salieri, as well as his pupil, Weigl, were preferred to him, he became convinced that he would have to seek his fortune in foreign parts. The emperor was to be crowned in Frankfurt, in October. Mozart decided on going there. He took his eldest sister-in-law’s husband, the violin player, Hofer, with him; for he had no doubt of his success on this occasion. It was not vouchsafed to him, however, to attach himself to the court as its composer of chamber music, and his silver-ware had to go to the pawn-shop, that he might procure as much as a vehicle to travel in. This journey for the purposes of his art--it was destined to be his last--is described in his letters to his “best and dearest wife of my heart.” They breathe the deepest melancholy. In reading them, we cannot fail to see that the shadows of death were even now playing about his head. As if he had not been the most industrious of workers, he writes to his wife at this time: “I am now firmly resolved to do my very best here, and then I shall be heartily glad to be with you again. What a glorious life we shall live after this! I shall work--O how I shall work! that I may never again get into such a fatal state in consequence of unexpected contingencies.” He was, indeed, literally “immersed” in music. His application had so distracted him, and his mind was so unhinged in consequence, that he did not dare even to cut his own meat in eating, lest he might injure himself. His strange contortions of countenance and his strange gestures showed that his thoughts were far from being in the world about him. He had fallen into the hands of usurers, and that “un-christian class of people,” as he called them, succeeded in involving him completely in their meshes.