He came to them once after Karl had been placed in another school and wept as he told them that his nephew had left him and gone to his mother.  The lad was recovered by the assistance of the police, and was then placed with this family again.  He once wrote a sharp letter to the father criticising his methods in the teaching of Karl, but, on reconsidering the matter sent word to the daughter asking her not to show it to her father, as it was written in a blind rage, which he now regretted.  All this shows how carefully he looked after the young man’s welfare.  It was the same with his music, which was intrusted to Czerny.  The youth inherited some musical talent and under favoring conditions might have achieved something as a musician.  When the instruction began, Beethoven was in the habit of calling at Czerny’s house nearly every day with his nephew.  On these occasions the master would frequently improvise on the piano, to Czerny’s great enjoyment.  Czerny, through his devotion to Beethoven, paid particular attention to Karl, and the boy made rapid progress.  He accompanied his uncle on visits to other houses, by the latter’s desire, with the object of forming his taste and stimulating his ambition for the art.

From the start Beethoven planned a fine career for his nephew.  “The boy must be an artist or a savant that he may lead a noble life,” he said once.  On another occasion, when the youth was about eighteen years of age, he said, on introducing him to a visitor, “you can ask him a riddle in Greek if you like.”  “My wishes and efforts have no other aim than that the boy may receive the best possible education,” he wrote when contending in the Court of Appeals for possession of the boy, “as his capacity warrants the indulgence of the best hopes for his future, and that the expectation, which his father built upon my fraternal love may be fulfilled.  The shoot is still flexible; but if more time be wasted it will grow crooked for want of the training hand of the gardener, and good conduct, intellect, and character, may be lost forever.  I know no more sacred duty than the superintendence of the education of a child.  The duty of guardianship can only consist in this—­to appreciate what is good, and to take such measures as are conformable with the object in view.”

The young man cared but little for this solicitude.  In his uncle’s home he had to study, listen to many a lecture perhaps, and do many a thing that he did not like to do.  When with his mother it was different; spending-money was to be had while there and in general an easy time.  No wonder that he preferred being with her.  Later, when he entered the university he absented himself as much as possible from his uncle’s house.  Beethoven had centred his affections on the young man, and, when he remained indifferent, irresponsive, it caused him the keenest anguish.  The master’s letters to him from Baden are pathetic.  “In what part of me am I not injured and torn?” “My continued solitude only still further enfeebles me, and really my weakness often amounts to a swoon.  Oh! do not further grieve me, for the man with the scythe (Sensenman) will grant me no long delay.”  His journal entries on this account, are the utterances of a creature at bay; of a being in the last extremity.  “O! hoere stets Unaussprechlicher, hoere mich deinen ungluecklichen ungluecklichsten aller Sterblichen.”