Excessive diffidence was not the distinguishing trait of another young man, Karl Holz, who had ingratiated himself into the master’s favor in these years.  Holz had a post under government, was of good social position, possessed fine conversational powers, and was an all-round entertaining and agreeable person.  He was a musician of first-rate attainments, a member of the Schuppanzich Quartet, and occasionally acted as director of the Concert Spirituel of Vienna.

Holz’s gayety and light-heartedness helped to dispel the melancholy which had become habitual with Beethoven at this time.  He had the discernment to see that such an atmosphere was unsuited to a young man of Karl’s temperament, and may very well have encouraged Holz’s visits on his nephew’s account.  The situation had its defects however, as Holz’s convivial habits were communicated to Beethoven, who was led at times to drink more wine than was good for him.  Beethoven, in one of his letters to his nephew, reproached him with being a thorough Viennese, to which the young man retorted in kind, alluding to the master’s friendship with Holz.  This was before the reconciliation with Von Breuning had been effected.  After that event he saw him less frequently.  The young man however, retained his hold on the master’s regard and maintained the footing of an intimate friend for the remainder of his life.  Flashes of the old humor constantly appear in his letters to Holz, which, though tinctured somewhat with coarseness, make pleasanter reading than his remark to Fanny del Rio—­“My life is of no worth to myself.  I only wish to live for the boy’s sake.”  Holz took him out of this mood.

In the last year of his life Beethoven, at Holz’s request appointed him his biographer as follows: 

        
                                   VIENNA, Aug. 30, 1826. 

I am happy to give my friend, Karl Holz, the testimonial he
desires, namely,—­that I consider him well qualified to write my
biography if indeed, I may presume to think this will be desired.  I
place the utmost confidence in his faithfully transmitting to
posterity what I have imparted to him for this purpose. 

          
                                                                                  LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN.

Holz, however, was not equal to the requirements, and this duty was relegated to Schindler.

A curious change affected Beethoven in his later years on the subject of money.  It was not avarice, that “good old-gentlemanly vice” of Byron’s which influenced him, but it resembled it at times.  With his nephew as the inciting cause, money, to which he had hitherto been indifferent, now assumed a new value to him.  This is evidenced by absurd economies (alternated it is true by occasional extravagances), which are a feature of this time.  The diminution of his pension, the nature of the compositions of these years from which for the most part no money was