disappointed hopes. His sensitive nature could not withstand the
repeated material shocks to which it was subjected. And the pity is,
that it gave way just when there seemed a prospect of a change. "The
Magic Flute" had been produced with great success, and that in the face
of relentless opposition from envious rivals; and orders from new
sources and on better terms were coming to him. But the turn of the
tide was too late. When he received an order for a Requiem from a
person who wished his identity to remain unknown--he was subsequently
discovered to be a nobleman, who wanted to produce the work as his
own--Mozart already felt the hand of death upon him and declared that
he was composing the Requiem for his own obsequies. Even after he was
obliged to take to his bed, he worked at it, saying it was to be _his_
Requiem and must be ready in time. The afternoon before he died, he
went over the completed portions with three friends, and at the
Lachrymosa burst into tears. In the evening he lost consciousness, and
early the following morning, December 5, 1791, he passed away. The
immediate cause of death was rheumatic fever with typhoid
complications, and his distracted widow, hoping to catch the same
disease and be carried away by it, threw herself upon his bed. She was
too prostrated to attend his funeral, which, be it said to the shame of
his friends, was a shabby affair. The day was stormy, and after the
service indoors they left before the actual burial, which was in one of
the "common graves," holding ten or twelve bodies and intended to be
worked over every few years for new interments. When, as soon as
Constance was strong enough, she visited the cemetery there was a new
grave-digger, who upon being questioned could not locate her husband's
grave, and to this day Mozart's last resting-place is unknown.

It must not be reckoned against Constance that, eighteen years after
Mozart's death, she married again. For she did not forget the man on