r
life a man of such explosive whims, of such absorption in his own self
and art, of such utter deafness, untidiness, and morose habit of mind.

But Beethoven himself was not always eager to wed. He could write to
Gleichenstein:

"Now you can help me get a wife. If you find a pretty one--one who may
perhaps lend a sigh to my harmonies, do the courting for me. But she
must be beautiful; I cannot love anything that is not beautiful; if I
could, I should fall in love with myself."

One feels here a touch of disdain and frivolity. Yet he could grow
fervid in such an outcry as that of his forty-sixth year:

"Love, and love alone, can give me a happy life. O God! let me find her
who will keep me in the path of virtue, the one I may rightly call my
own."

Again, he could coldly rejoice that he had not sacrificed any of his
individuality, or any of his devotion to music, to Giulietta Guicciardi.
And the diary of Fanny Giannatasio, whose father took care of
Beethoven's nephew, quotes a conversation Beethoven held on the subject
of wedlock. According to this, he said that marriage should not be so
indissoluble, liberty-crushing a bond; that a marriage without love was
best, but that no marriages were happy. He added:

"For himself he was excessively glad that not one of the girls had
become his wife, whom he had passionately loved in former days, and
thought at the time it would be the highest joy on earth to possess."

To this cynic wisdom, the poor Fanny Giannatasio del Rio, whose love for
Beethoven would never have been known had not her diary enambered it for
publication after her death, adds the words: "I will not repeat my
answer, but I think I know a girl who, beloved by him, would not have
made his life unhappy."

Ay, there's the rub! Could any one have woven a happiness about the life
of that ferocious master of art, that pinioned, but struggling, victim
of fate?

CHAPTER XV.

VON WEBER--THE RAKE REFORMED

"Though thou hast now offended like a man.
Do not persever in it like a devil;
Yet, yet, thou hast an amiable soul,
If sin by custom grow not into nature."

Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus"

Few novels are so brilliantly written, or so variously absorbing, as the
life of Von Weber, written by his son, the Baron Max Maria von Weber.
For years the son had resisted the urgence of his mother to undertake
the work, fearing that partiality would warp, and indelicacy stain, any
suc