whom her heart first was set. Her second husband, Nissen, formerly
Danish chargé d'affaires in Vienna, is best known by the biography of
Mozart which he wrote under her guidance. They removed to Mozart's
birthplace, Salzburg, where Nissen died in 1826. Constance's death was
strangely associated with Mozart's memory. It was as if in her last
moments she must go back to him who was her first love. For she died
in Salzburg, on March 6, 1842, a few hours after the model for the
Mozart monument, which adorns one of the spacious squares of the city
where the composer was born, was received there. She had been the
life-love of a child of genius and, without being singularly gifted
herself, had understood how to humor his whims and adapt herself to his
moods in which sunshine often was succeeded by shadow. It was
singularly appropriate that, surviving him many years, she yet died
under circumstances which formed a new link between her and his memory.




Beethoven and his "Immortal Beloved"

One day when Baron Spaun, an old Viennese character and a friend of
Beethoven's, entered the composer's lodgings, he found the man, every
line of whose face denoted, above all else, strength of character,
bending over a portrait of a woman and weeping, as he muttered, "You
were too good, too angelic!" A moment later, he had thrust the
portrait into an old chest and, with a toss of his well-set head, was
his usual self again.

As Spaun was leaving, he said to the composer, "There is nothing evil
in your face to-day, old fellow."