BEETHOVEN 323 girl who loves me and whom I love. After the lapse of two years I have again enjoyed some blissful moments, and now for the first time I feel that marriage can bestow happiness ; but alas ! she is not in the same rank of life as myself. . . . You shall see me as happy as I am destined to be here below, but not unhappy. No, that I could not bear. I will grasp Fate by the throat ; it shall not utterly crush me. Oh, it is so glorious to live one's life a thousand times ! " No misanthropy this, surely ; he could not always speak the speech of common men, or care for the tawdry bravery of titles or fine clothes in which they strutted, but what a heart there was in the man, what a wondrous insight into all the beauty of the world, visible and invisible, around him ! The most glorious love- song ever composed, " Adelaide," was written by him ; but Julia Guicciardi pre- ferred a Count Gallenberg, keeper of the royal archives in Vienna, and Beet- hoven, to the end of his days, went on his way alone. It was at this time that he composed his oratorio, "The Mount of Olives," which can hardly be reckoned among his finest works ; and his one opera — but such an opera — " Fidelio." The greater part of these works was composed dur- ing his stay, in the summer months, at Hetzendorf, a pretty, secluded little village near Schonbrunn. He spent his days wandering alone through the quiet, shady alleys of the imperial park there, and his favorite seat was between two boughs of a venerable oak, at a height of about two feet from the ground. For some time he had apartments at a residence of Baron Pronay's, near this village ; but he suddenly left, " because the baron would persist in making him profound bows every time that he met him." Like a true poet, he delighted in the coun- try. " No man on earth," he writes, " loves the country more. Woods, trees, and rock give the response which man requires. Every tree seems to say, ' Holy, holy."' In 1804 the magnificent "Eroica" symphony was completed. This had originally been commenced in honor of Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul, who, Beethoven — throughout his life an ardent Republican — then believed was about to bring liberty to all the nations of Europe. When the news of the em- pire came the dream departed, and Beethoven, .in a passionate rage, tore the title page of the symphony in two, and, with a torrent of imprecations against the ty- rant, stamped on the torn fragments.
- ' My hero — a tyrant ! " he shrieked, as he trampled on the poor page. On
this page the inscription had been simply, " Bonaparte — Luigi v. Beethover " For some years he refused to publish the work, and, when at last this was done, the inscription read as follows : " Sinfonia Eroica per festigiari il sovvenire d'un grand' uomo" (Heroic symphony, to celebrate the memory of a great man). When Napoleon died, in 1821, Beethoven said, " Seventeen years before I com- posed the music for this occasion ; " and surely no grander music than that of the " Funeral March " was ever composed for the obsequies of a fallen hero. This is not the place to enter into a description of the marvellous succession of colos- sal works — symphonies, concertos, sonatas, trios, quartets, etc., culminating in the
- ' Choral Symphony," his ninth, and last — -which, through those long years of a
