Stopping for a time at Mannheim, he attempted to gain the position of tutor to the elector's children, but was disappointed. Here he fell in love with Aloysia Weber, a pretty girl of fifteen, whose father, a prompter at the National Theatre, earned only two hundred dollars yearly for the support of his wife and six children. The girl had a fine voice; and Mozart, blinded by love, asked no higher joy than to write operas in which she might be the star. The good old father, who had spent all his life in helping his son to win fame, was nearly heart-broken when he learned of this foolish affection, and wrote him tenderly but firmly: "Off with you to Paris; get the great folks on your side; _aut Caesar, aut nihil_. From Paris, the name and fame of a man of great talent goes through the whole world." The young man, carrying out his childish motto, "God first, and then papa," reluctantly started for Paris. Here he did not meet with great success, for scores of applicants waited for every position. His loving mother soon died, perhaps from over economy in her cold, dark lodgings; and the young musician took his lonely way back to Salzburg, begging his father's consent to his stopping at Mannheim to see the Webers. Finding that Aloysia had gone upon the stage at Munich, he hastened to see her. She had been offered a good salary. Meantime Mozart had won no new laurels at Paris. He was small in stature, and poor; and the girl who wept at his departure a few months previously professed now scarcely to have seen his face before. The young lover, cut to the heart, yet proud, seated himself at the piano, and played, "I leave the girl gladly who cares not for me," and then hastened away to Salzburg. Aloysia married a comedian, and lived a most unhappy life, gaining some fame from singing the music which Mozart wrote for her. He remained at home for a year and a half, till called to Munich to write the opera "Idomeneo," and later to Vienna. Here, unfortunately, he met the Webers again, and, their father having died, he boarded in their house, and gave lessons to Constance, a younger sister of Aloysia. She was a plain, good-hearted girl, without much energy, but with a great appreciation of her gifted teacher. The result came naturally; he fell in love with the penniless girl, and, despite the distress of his aged father at his choice, married her when he was twenty-six and she eighteen.