At the very outset of his career, when life promised all fair and bright
things to him, two comrades linked themselves to him, and ever after
that refused to give him up--grim poverty and still grimmer disease.
About the same time that he lost a fixed salary through the death of
his friend the Elector of Cologne, he began to grow deaf. Early in
1800, walking one day in the woods with his devoted friend and pupil,
Ferdinand Ries, he disclosed the sad secret to him that the whole joyous
world of sound was being gradually closed up to him; the charm of the
human voice, the notes of the woodland birds, the sweet babblings of
Nature, jargon to others, but intelligible to genius, the full-born
splendors of _heard_ music--all, all were fast receding from his grasp.

Beethoven was extraordinarily sensitive to the influences of Nature.
Before his disease became serious he writes: "I wander about here with
music-paper among the hills, and dales, and valleys, and scribble a good
deal. No man on earth can love the country as I do." But one of Nature's
most delightful modes of speech to man was soon to be utterly lost to
him. At last he became so deaf that the most stunning crash of thunder
or the _fortissimo_ of the full orchestra were to him as if they were
not. His bitter, heartrending cry of agony, when he became convinced
that the misfortune was irremediable, is full of eloquent despair: "As
autumn leaves wither and fall, so are my hopes blighted. Almost as I
came, I depart. Even the lofty courage, which so often animated me in
the lovely days of summer, is gone forever. O Providence! vouchsafe me
one day of pure felicity! How long have I been estranged from the glad
echo of true joy! When, O my God! when shall I feel it again in the
temple of Nature and man? Never!"

And the small-souled, mole-eyed gossips and critics called him hard,
churlish, and cynical--him, for whom the richest thing in Nature's
splendid dower had been obliterated, except a soul, which never in its
deepest sufferings lost its noble faith in God and man, or allowed its
indomitable courage to be one whit weakened. That there were periods
of utterly rayless despair and gloom we may guess; but not for long did
Beethoven's great nature cower before its evil genius.

III.

Within three years, from 1805 to 1808, Beethoven composed some of his
greatest works: the oratorio of "The Mount of Olives," the opera of
"Fidelio," and the two noble symphonies, "Pa