flight of genius? You can at
least say, "I have seen Beethoven create." Let us leave, unseen and
unheard!' We departed."

[Illustration: A Symphony by Beethoven. From painting by A. Graefle.]

Another German artist, Graefle, has produced an interesting work
depicting Beethoven playing to his friends.

"At the pianoforte Beethoven seemed a god--at times in the humour to
play, at others not. If he happened not to be in the humour, it
required pressing and reiterated entreaties to get him to the
instrument. Before he began in earnest, he used sportively to strike
the keys with the palm of his hand, draw his fingers along the keyboard
from one end to the other, and play all manner of gambols, at which he
laughed heartily. Once at the pianoforte, and in a genial mood with
his surroundings, he would extemporise for one and two hours at a
stretch, amid the solemn silence of his listeners. He demanded
absolute silence from conversation whenever he put his fingers upon the
pianoforte keys to play. If this was not forthcoming, he rose up,
publicly upbraided the offenders, and left the room. This mode of
resenting a nuisance--one not yet extinct--was once illustrated at
Count Browne's, where Beethoven and Ries were engaged in playing a
duet, yet during which one of the guests started an animated
conversation with a lady. Exasperated at such an affront to his
artistic honour, Beethoven rose up, glared at the pair, and shouted
out, 'I play no more for such hogs,'--nor would he touch another note
or allow Ries to do so, although earnestly entreated by the company.
'His improvisation,' Czerny tells us, 'was most brilliant and striking;
in whatever company he might chance to be, he knew how to produce such
an effect upon every hearer that frequently not an eye remained dry,
while many would break out into loud sobs, for there was something
wonderful in his expression in addition to the beauty and originality
of his ideas and his spirited style of rendering them.' Ries says: 'No
artist that I ever heard came at all near the height Beethoven attained
in this branch of playing. The wealth of ideas which forced themselves
on him, the caprices to which he surrendered himself, the variety of
treatment, the difficulties, were inexhaustible. Even the Abbe
Vogler's admirers were compelled to admit as much.'"

Tomaschek was greatly impressed by Beethoven. He writes: "It was in
1798, when I was studying law, that Beethoven, th