Thus he was continually fretted by the carelessness or the rascality of the servants in whom he was obliged to trust.  He writes in his diary:  “Nancy is too uneducated for a housekeeper—­indeed, quite a beast.”  “My precious servants were occupied from seven o’clock till ten trying to kindle a fire.”  “The cook’s off again.”  “I shied half a dozen books at her head.”  They made his dinner so nasty he couldn’t eat it.  “No soup to-day, no beef, no eggs.  Got something from the inn at last.”

His temper and peculiarities, too, made it difficult for him to live in peace with landlords and fellow-lodgers.  As his deafness increased, he struck and thumped harder at the keys of his piano, the sound of which he could scarcely hear.  Nor was this all.  The music that filled his brain gave him no rest.  He became an inspired madman.  For hours he would pace the room “howling and roaring” (as his pupil Ries puts it); or he would stand beating time with hand and foot to the music which was so vividly present to his mind.  This soon put him into a feverish excitement, when, to cool himself, he would take his water-jug, and, thoughtless of everything, pour its contents over his hands, after which he could sit down to his piano.  With all this it can easily be imagined that Beethoven was frequently remonstrated with.  The landlord complained of a damaged ceiling, and the fellow-lodgers declared that either they or the madman must leave the house, for they could get no rest where he was.  So Beethoven never for long had a resting-place.  Impatient at being interfered with, he immediately packed up and went off to some other vacant lodging.  From this cause he was at one time paying the rent of four lodgings at once.  At times he would get tired of this changing from one place to another—­from the suburbs to the town—­and then he would fall back upon the hospitable home of a patron, once again taking possession of an apartment which he had vacated, probably without the least explanation or cause.  One admirer of his genius, who always reserved him a chamber in his establishment, used to say to his servants:  “Leave it empty; Beethoven is sure to come back again.”

The instant that Beethoven entered the house he began to write and cipher on the walls, the blinds, the table, everything, in the most abstracted manner.  He frequently composed on slips of paper, which he afterward misplaced, so that he had great difficulty in finding them.  At one time, indeed, he forgot his own name and the date of his birth.

It is said that he once went into a Viennese restaurant, and, instead of giving an order, began to write a score on the back of the bill-of-fare, absorbed and unconscious of time and place.  At last he asked how much he owed.  “You owe nothing, sir,” said the waiter.  “What! do you think I have not dined?” “Most assuredly.”  “Very well, then, give me something.”  “What do you wish?” “Anything.”

These infirmities do not belittle the man of genius, but set off his greatness as with a foil.  They illustrate the thought of Goethe:  “It is all the same whether one is great or small, he has to pay the reckoning of humanity.”