Young Beethoven, therefore, had little time for illness.  His father barely supported himself, and the sustenance of his two little brothers, respectively twelve and thirteen years of age, devolved upon him.  He was, however, equal to his situation.  He played his organ still,—­the instrument which was then above all others to his taste; he entered the Orchestra as player upon the viola; received the appointment of chamber-musician—­pianist—­to the Elector; and besides all this, engaged in the detested labor of teaching.  It proves no small energy of character, that the motherless youth of seventeen, “afflicted with asthma,” which he was “fearful might end in consumption,” struggling against a “state of melancholy, almost as great a misfortune as sickness itself,” succeeded in overcoming all, and securing the welfare of himself, his father, and his brothers.  When he left Bonn finally, five years later, Carl, then eighteen, could support himself by teaching music, and Johann was apprenticed to the court apothecary; while the father appears to have had a comfortable subsistence provided for him,—­although no longer an active member of the Electoral Chapel,—­for the few weeks which, as it happened, remained of his life.

The scattered notices which are preserved of Beethoven, during this period, are difficult to arrange in a chronological order.  We read of a joke played at the expense of Heller, the principal tenor singer of the Chapel, in which that singer, who prided himself upon his firmness in pitch, was completely bewildered by a skilful modulation of the boy upon the piano-forte, and forced to stop;—­of the music to a chivalrous ballad, performed by the noblemen attached to the court, of which for a long time Count Waldstein was the reputed author, but which in fact was the work of his protege;—­and there are other anecdotes, probably familiar to most readers, showing the great skill and science which he already exhibited in his performance of chamber music in the presence of the Elector.

We see him intimate as ever in the Breuning family, mingling familiarly with the best society of Bonn, which he met at their house,—­and even desperately in love!  First it is with Frauelein Jeannette d’Honrath, of Cologne, a beautiful and lively blonde, of pleasing manners, sweet and gentle disposition, an ardent lover of music, and an agreeable singer, who often came to Bonn and spent weeks with the Breunings.  She seems to have played the coquette a little, both with our young artist and his friend Stephen.  It is not difficult to imagine the effect upon the sensitive and impulsive Ludwig, when the beautiful girl, nodding to him in token of its application, sang in tender accents the then popular song,—­

  “Mich heute noch von dir zu trennen,
  Und dieses nicht verhindern koennen,
    Ist zu empfindlich fuer mein Herz.”

She saw fit, however, to marry an Austrian, Carl Greth, a future commandant at Temeswar, and her youthful lover was left to console himself by transferring his affections to another beauty, Frauelein W.