"Dearest Elise, always love your sincere friend, Carl von Weber; in the sixth year of his age; Nüremberg, the 10th of September, 1792." We hear of no more sweethearts for eleven long years. When Carl Maria was seventeen, Franz Anton left him in Vienna, where he plunged into dissipation at a tempo presto appassionato. As his son writes, "through carolling, kissing, drinking Vienna, he wandered with a troop of choice spirits, drinking, kissing, carolling." The intoxicating draught of pleasure quaffed in the lively capital fevered the lad's blood, and the ardent imaginative temperament burst forth in that adoration of female beauty which strewed his life's path with roses, not without thorns. His teacher, Abbé Vogler, however, secured him a position as conductor at the Breslau opera, and he was compelled to tear himself away from a sweetheart of rank, who was somewhat older than he. His father went with him, and by his bumptiousness brought the boy many enemies, and, through his speculations, many debts in addition to those he acquired for himself. Here another entanglement awaited him. His son tells it thus: "Many a female heart, no doubt, both within the theatre and without its walls, was allured by the sweet smile and seductive manners of the pale, slender, languishing, but passionately ardent young conductor; whilst his own heart seems to have been more seriously involved in an unfortunate and misplaced attachment for a singer in the theatre. This woman was married to a rough drunkard who mishandled her. The couple were daily falling more and more into an abject state of poverty. Young Carl Maria pitied the woman; and pity was soon transformed in the feeling next akin." "That she was an unworthy object of either pity or affection is very clear: she misused his goodness of heart, gnawed incessantly at his slender purse, and quickly plunged him into a slough of difficulties nigh equal to her own." Various misfortunes and indiscretions brought Von Weber to the loss of his post. But a woman intervened to save him from disaster. This was a Fräulein von Belonda, maid of honour to the Duchess of Würtemberg, who took a deep interest in Carl, and persuaded the duke to make him musical director. The continual successes of the French armies overrunning Europe forbade the duke to keep up his retinue of artists. But he secured Weber a post at Stuttgart as private secretary to his brother, Ludwig, another younger brother of the King of Würtemberg, a monster of corpulence, who had to have his dining-table made crescent-wise that he might get near enough to eat. Into the circle of these two unlovable figures and their ugly court Weber was thrust.