should attract him far more than the ordinary woman of his own class.  And thus it happened that several times he staked his chances of happiness on a love he knew could never be consummated.  Yet no one needed a kind, helpful, sympathetic wife more than did our poet-musician.  She would have soothed his sensitive soul when he suffered from fancied wrongs, shielded him from intrusion, shared his sorrows and triumphs, and attended to his house-keeping arrangements, which were always in a sad state of confusion.  This blissful state was seemingly not for him.  It was best for the great genius to devote himself wholly to his divine art, and to create those masterpieces which will always endure.

In 1804 Beethoven completed one of his greatest symphonies, the “Eroica.”  He made a sketch, as we have seen, two years before.  He had intended it to honor Napoleon, to whose character and career he was greatly attracted.  But when Napoleon entered Paris in triumph and was proclaimed Emperor, Beethoven’s worship was turned to contempt.  He seized the symphony, tore the little page to shreds and flung the work to the other end of the room.  It was a long time before he would look at the music again, but finally, he consented to publish it under the title by which it is now known.

When we consider the number and greatness of Beethoven’s compositions we stand aghast at the amount of labor he accomplished.  “I live only in my music,” he wrote, “and no sooner is one thing done than the next is begun.  I often work at two or three things at once.”  Music was his language of expression, and through his music we can reach his heart and know the man as he really was.  At heart he was a man capable of loving deeply and most worthy to be loved.

Of the composer’s two brothers, one had passed away and had left his boy Carl, named after himself, as a solemn charge, to be brought up by Uncle Ludwig as his own son.  The composer took up this task generously and unselfishly.  He was happy to have the little lad near him, one of his own kin to love.  But as Carl grew to young manhood he proved to be utterly unworthy of all this affection.  He treated his good uncle shamefully, stole money from him, though he had been always generously supplied with it, and became a disgrace to the family.  There is no doubt that his nephew’s dissolute habits saddened the master’s life, estranged him from his friends and hastened his death.

How simple and modest was this great master, in face of his mighty achievements!  He wrote to a friend in 1824:  “I feel as if I had scarcely written more than a few notes.”  These later years had been more than full of work and anxiety.  Totally deaf, entirely thrown in upon himself, often weak and ill, the master kept on creating work after work of the highest beauty and grandeur.

Ludwig van Beethoven passed from this plane March 26, 1827, having recently completed his fifty-sixth year, and was laid to rest in the Waehring Cemetery near Vienna.  Unlike Mozart, he was buried with much honor.  Twenty thousand people followed him to his grave.  Among them was Schubert, who had visited him on his deathbed, and was one of the torch bearers.  Several of the Master’s compositions were sung by a choir of male voices, accompanied by trombones.  At the grave Hummel laid three laurel wreaths on the casket.