Unbeknownst to Mozart, it arrived two hours after the Salzburg coach left for Vienna. Mozart was writing one morning, huddled in his shirtsleeves over the paper, when his door opened to reveal his father standing there, gray hair pulled back in wound ribbons, gazing critically about the room at the clothes thrown here and there, the unmade bed, the dirty plates pushed to the side of the table.

Mozart leapt up at once, passing his hand over his mouth to conceal his agitation. “You’ve come.”

“You were expecting me, were you not? Surely you were expecting me. We planned—”

“Yes, of course. Come in, come in. The journey was ...”

“Difficult. My bones ache.”

Mozart kissed the older man, rang for the landlady to remove the dirty dishes, and paced the room anxiously. He hardly heard the stories of Salzburg, of work difficulties, as he hurled the covers hastily on the bed and picked up his dirty hose. He wanted to throw open his arms at the mess and cry, You see, this is why I must marry, Father. Can’t you see I need a wife? But with the events of the past week, it was not the time to do it. He did not know what Constanze was feeling. He could not break through her anger, her little hard profile when he tried to see her.

He spoke about music with his father, who then said dryly, “And so? Where’s the girl?” He looked about the little room as if he expected his son had hidden Constanze Weber in a closet. “I’m hungry for my midday meal; ask her to join us.”

Mozart hurried from his rooms and went running down the street, dodging between horses and carts and shoppers, slipping past the stalls of goods for sale, and to the house in Petersplatz, but Constanze was not home; a neighbor said he had seen her go to market. He turned and headed that way, the dust of the warm streets now covering his shoes, and saw her emerging from the fishmonger’s, a large piece of fish wrapped in old paper in her basket. He felt his hair stand on end as he approached her.

“My father’s come,” he said into her ear. “We’ll all have a fine dinner together. He’s hungry and wants to meet you. I couldn’t stop him from coming; I asked him to postpone his trip. Come right now, please, and I beg you, Stanzi, my beloved, my only darling, my wife to be, don’t let him see any differences between us. They’ll all be gone soon, once you stop sulking and realize how much I love you, so there’s no need for him to know about them now.”

“I’ll make up our differences when my hurt stops,” she said. “It just doesn’t go away that quickly. But I’ll meet your father and be very nice, as I was taught to be. Oh, why couldn’t he have come next week? I’m just almost over being angry; I needed only a little time more, Wolfgang.” She slipped her hand in his, and he took her basket of fish. They walked together toward his rooms, past his concierge, who stood in front of the building eating an ice, and climbed the stairs.

Constanze saw a small man with gray hair and a sour face, but his hands, with their callused fingertips from his lifetime of playing the violin, were rather beautiful.

She curtseyed, suddenly aware that she was wearing a mended dress, discolored along the hem with street muck and floor sweepings.

He returned a small bow. “Ah,” said Leopold. “So you are Constanze. Yes, it is a pleasure to meet you, Constanze....”

“I hope your journey was well, sir.”

“Coach journeys tire me....”

The conversation went on in this stiff way until they were interrupted by a knock from below and the nasal voice of the old concierge. “It’s my librettist,” Mozart said. “He likely has more of the words for me to set; I’ve been waiting for them. Sit down, sit down and be comfortable. Father, show her some Salzburg hospitality. There’s a little wine in the decanter. Then we’ll go for supper.”

Mozart’s father and Constanze both took chairs. Constanze folded her hands in her lap. She realized that they were not very clean. For a few moments they listened to the agitated voices below.

Leopold muttered of wine, of church music, of childhoods. Then he cleared his throat. “You seem like an honest girl, Mademoiselle Weber,” he said. “And I think I see a pleasing innocence in your face, yes, just as he has described you. You think you know my son, but that’s difficult to do; he doesn’t know himself, never has.”

She pressed her hands together. “I believe I know him well, sir. What do you mean?”

“He thinks he loves people, but it’s music he loves. I formed him for music and he belongs to music, but it won’t give him a life. He can’t make his way in the world, and for any woman to marry a man like that would be a disaster. Haven’t you waited for him often, only to have him come late? Has he never looked up from his writing and not even realize who you are? There, you see. And what would occur if you married him? You would be waiting, waiting. You would be by a window waiting for someone often out in society, often in the presence of many beautiful women. And then you would be sorry you didn’t listen to the sad words of an old man who loves him. For I have waited, mademoiselle; I have waited many years for my son to truly come home. And if he does marry ... take this nothing against yourself, mademoiselle ... I think perhaps your family is not the best to marry into. He will have to make his way in the world. Do not be offended by my words, but he can’t succeed with you at his side. He would not be wise to choose to marry the daughter of a boardinghouse keeper.”

The voices below grew louder, and a door slammed. Mozart came up the steps and back into the room, running his hand through his wild hair. “Well,” he said a little breathlessly, looking from one to the other, “you’ve had a chance to talk. That’s good. We should perhaps go and have something to eat. There’s nothing here.”

Constanze stood at once. “I can’t come; I’m expected home.”

“Tomorrow then?”

“Yes, tomorrow.”

“Let me walk with you a bit.”

The day was very hot, and the lemonade stand on the corner, with its gay blue-striped awning, was crowded. She let him take her arm but did not move close to him, and he said with all tenderness, “Has he said something that upset you? Beloved, beloved, tell me what he said.”

The words stumbled out, and when he heard, he seemed to swell with anger. “How dare he speak to you like that?” he said, his voice rising in spite of the crowds about them. “Where’s his respect for my wishes? I respect him. I’ll always provide for him no matter how many wretched lessons to deaf pupils I must teach. And what of all the money I earned as a child? He invested in me; he’s not poor. By God, he must let me go! If I rise or fall, I must do it on my own.”

He was shaking her hands now. “He will come round and give his blessing to our marriage. He will. Nothing matters but that we make up and be the dearest friends again, my Stanzi.”

Her face had become very plain. “But don’t you see, I couldn’t. I couldn’t marry anyone with a father like him. He’d be pulling you one way, and I’d be pulling you another. I want him to like me, and he doesn’t. He won’t. I wouldn’t ask you to choose between us. Listen, Wolferl: we were both lonely and we fell in love, but perhaps it wasn’t meant to be. Perhaps we can find a way to be friends as we once were. Isn’t that possible?”

“No, it isn’t,” he said quietly, and leaned against the side of a church where they had stopped. “But I know you’ve felt this way since we quarreled. Everything’s going badly for me today. One day you think all’s within your grasp, and the next it’s swept away. That’s true of life, but I always want it differently. Gottlieb Stephanie’s too busy to complete the libretto, and it’s likely the commission will be offered to another composer. My writing is too original for some people; I’m not handsome; and no one will forgive me for growing up, not even my own family. Today I may have lost my chance at the opera and my hopes of marriage to you. We perhaps shouldn’t speak anymore of it. We’ll see each other in the street now and then, Constanze. I’ll always be glad to hear of you. Send my greetings to little Sophie when you write her.”

He walked away with his head lowered, and she stood for a time with the basket of fish on her arm, and then walked home. Two neighbors were sitting with her mother in the kitchen drinking coffee; Constanze climbed the stairs to her room, and lay silently across her bed with her arm over her face.

Mozart cried passionately, “What opera competes with mine? I heard it from my librettist. I was assured mine would be given when I played parts of it last week for the Count.”

“Yours might have a chance if you had it ready,” Thorwart said dryly. “But you don’t. We must have an opera in place, and there are others to choose from; thus, we’ve done so.”

“But I’ll have mine done in a few weeks; the librettist swears there will be only a very short delay.”

Thorwart frowned and wagged his heavy finger. “Ah, young man, young man, you think too highly of yourself. Remember that you are but one of many composers in Vienna. I’ll tell you what your downfall is, Mozart: your pride. You’re a musician, which makes you a servant. Servants aren’t nobility. I’m not nobility, but I come closer to it than you because I act like a gentleman. You had a chance to make a decent living as a church musician and turned away from it.”

“You have stood against me.”

“What cause have I to stand for you?”

Mozart clutched the edge of the table hard. “Sir,” he said, “it would be easier for me to get all the positions you could ever obtain than for you to become what I am, even if you had three lifetimes to do it.”

With the greatest dignity he bowed himself out of the room. Then he darted down many streets, between carriages and wagons, to the door of his librettist, and was let in by Stephanie’s startled wife. He pushed past her into the bedroom, shook the rotund, snoring man from his sleep, crying, “Where is the libretto? Give me the libretto!”

The sections came on time as promised, and he did nothing but write. After three days his father went home, and Mozart continued in his cluttered rooms alone, composing piece after piece of his opera.