Later he could not fail to hear of the couple's devotion. "Vienna was
witness to these relations," wrote a contemporary of Mozart's and
Constance's love for each other; and when Aloysia and her husband
quarrelled and separated, the Emperor, meeting Constance and referring
to her sister's troubles, said, "What a difference it makes to have a
good husband."

In spite of poverty and its attendant struggles, Mozart's marriage was
a happy one, because it was a marriage of love. Like every child of
genius, he had his moods, but Constance adapted herself to them and
thereby won his confidence and gained an influence over him which,
however, she brought into play only when the occasion demanded. When
he was thinking out a work, he was absent-minded, and at such times she
always was ready to humor him, and even cut his meat for him at table,
as he was apt during such periods of abstraction to injure himself.
But when he had a composition well in mind, to put it on paper seemed
little more to him than copying; and then he loved to have her sit by
him and tell him stories--yes, regular fairy tales and children's
stories, as if he himself still were a child. He would write and
listen, drop his pen and laugh, and then go on with work again. The
day before the first performance of "Don Giovanni," when the final
rehearsal already had been held, the overture still remained unwritten.
It had to be written overnight, and it was she who sat by him and
relieved the rush and strain of work with her cheerful prattle. It is
said that, among other things, she read to him the story of "Aladdin
and the Wonderful Lamp." Be that as it may;--she rubbed the lamp, and
the overture to "Don Giovanni" appeared.

Would that their life could be portrayed in a series of such charming
pictures! but grinding poverty was there also, and the bitterness of