"I am so deeply touched with this oppressed family that my greatest wish is to make them happy, and perhaps I may be able to do so.... I will be answerable with my life for her singing, and her doing credit to my recommendation.... I will gladly write an opera for Verona for thirty zeccini, solely that Madlle. Weber may acquire fame by it; for if I don't, I fear she may be sacrificed.... I have now written you of what is in my heart; my mother is satisfied with my plans." How well the mother was satisfied with the plans is evident from the postscript in her own hand, added secretly to the letter and displaying a slight touch of motherly jealousy: "No doubt you perceive by the accompanying letter that when Wolfgang makes new friends he would give his life for them. It is true that she does sing incomparably; still, we ought not to lose sight of our own interests. I write this quite secretly while he is at dinner, for I don't wish him to know it." Five days afterwards Mozart recurs to the subject, referring to a friend who married for money and commenting: "I hope never to marry in this way; I wish to make my wife happy, but not to become rich by her means.... The nobility must not marry from love or inclination, but from interest, and all kinds of other considerations. It would not at all suit a grandee to love his wife after she had done her duty, and brought in to the world an heir to his property. But we poor humble people are privileged not only to choose a wife who loves us, and whom we love, but we may, can, and do take such a one, because we are neither noble, nor high-born, nor rich, but, on the contrary, lowly, humble, and poor; we therefore need no wealthy wife, for our wealth, being in our heads, dies with us, and these no man can deprive us of, unless he cut them off, in which case we need nothing more." Next week he writes again asking his father to concern himself for the Webers. The poor father had been imploring Wolfgang to go to Paris for fame and fortune's sake. Now he finds him so far from being willing to pursue his own promising career, that he wishes to give up all thought of Paris and subordinate his genius to the task of boosting into fame the daughter of a poverty-stricken music-copyist! Leopold answers in the violent tone he could adopt on occasions, and tries to distract his son's attention by appealing to his ambition. He asks him to decide whether he wishes to become "a commonplace artist whom the world will forget, or a celebrated capellmeister of whom posterity will read years after in books,--whether, infatuated with a pretty face you one day breathe your last on a straw sack, your wife and children in a state of starvation, or, after a well-spent Christian life, you die in honour and independence and your family well provided for.... Get to Paris without delay, take your place by the side of really great people. _Aut Caesar ant nihil_."