seated on a throne, as clearly as if at a cobbler’s stall. The Archduke Karl, to whom Körner dedicated his heroic muse, was the object of his admiration also. The Empress of Russia, too, he admired.
“Whoever wished to learn of him was obliged to follow his steps everywhere, for to teach, or say anything, at an appointed time was to him impossible. Also he would stop immediately, if he found his companion not sufficiently versed in the matter to keep step with him.” He could not harangue; he must always be drawn out.
Amid all the miseries of his housekeeping or other disturbances, (and here, did space permit, I should like to quote his humourous notice of his “four bad days,” when he was almost starved,) he had recourse to his art. “He would be fretted a little while; then snatch up the score and write ‘noten im nothen,’ as he was wont to call them, and forget the plague.”
When quite out of health and spirits he restored himself by the composition of a grand mass. This “great, solemn mass,” as he calls it in his letter to Cherubini, was offered to the different courts of Europe for fifty ducats. The Prussian ambassador in a diplomatic letter attempted to get it for an order and ribbon. Beethoven merely wrote in reply, “fifty ducats.” He indeed was as disdainful of gold chains and orders as Bach was indifferent to them.
Although thus haughty, so much so that he would never receive a visit from Rossini, because, though he admitted that the Italian had genius, he thought he had not cultivated it with that devout severity proper to the artist, and was, consequently, corrupting the public taste, he was not only generous in his joy at any exhibition of the true spirit from others, but tenderly grateful for intelligent sympathy with himself, as is shown in the following beautiful narratives.
