"MA TRÈS-CHÈRE ÉPOUSE:--J'écris cette lettre dans la petite chambre au Jardin chez Leitgeb [a Salzburg horn-player]; où j'ai couché cette nuit excellement--et j'espère que ma chère épouse aura passé cette nuit aussi bien que moi. J'attend avec beaucoup d'impatience une lettre que m'apprendra comme vous avez passé le jour d'hier; je tremble quand je pense au baigne de St. Antoine; car je crains toujours le risque de tomber sur l'escalier en sortant--et je me trouve entre l'espérance et la crainte--une situation bien désagréable! Si vous n'éties pas grosse, je craignerais moins--mais abandonons cette idée triste!--Le ciel aura eu certainement soin de ma chère Stanza Maria!... "I have this moment received your dear letter, and find that you are well and in good spirits. Madame Leitgeb tied my neck-cloth for me to-day--but how? Good heavens! I told her repeatedly, 'This is the way my wife does it,' but it was all in vain. I rejoice to hear that you have so good an appetite;... You must walk a great deal, but I don't like you taking such long walks without me. Pray do all I tell you, for it comes from my heart. Adieu, my darling, my only love! I send you 2,999 and 1/2 kisses flying about in the air till you catch them. Nun sag ich dir etwas ins Ohr--du nun mir--nun machen wir dass Maul auf und zu immer mehr--und mehr--endlich sagen wir;--es ist wagen Slampi--Strampi, du kannst dir nun dabei denken was du willst das ist ebben die Comodität. Adieu, 1,000 tender kisses. Ever your Mozart." It is evident that during her stay in Baden some person attempted familiarity with Constanze and was rewarded with a box on the ears. Mozart wrote playfully to her advising her to be even more generous with her punishment, and suggesting that the man's wife would probably assist her if informed. It was about this time that Mozart was implicated by the gossips in a domestic tragedy. Frau Hofdämmel was a pupil of Mozart's whose husband grew fiendishly jealous of her, attacked her with a razor, wounded her almost to death, and then committed suicide. The story gradually grew up that Mozart was the cause of the man's jealousy, and Otto Jahn, in his first edition of his monumental biography, accepted the story, which he later discarded after Köchel, another biographer, had succeeded in proving that the assault and suicide took place five days after Mozart's death. Hofdämmel seems to have been so far from jealousy of Mozart that he was one of the elect to whom Mozart applied for a loan. There was, however, a young and beautiful singer, Henriette Baranius, in Berlin, who seems to have woven a stray web around Mozart while he was there in 1789--90. She sang in his "Entführung," and it was said that his friends had to help him out of his entanglement with her. But Jahn scouts the idea.