“Where are my father and mother?” asked he.
“Hallo, nightcap!” cried Carl, laughing, “is it you? Cannot you open your eyes? They are just behind us!”
Without answering his brother, Louis came to meet his parents, and bade them “good evening.”
His mother greeted him affectionately; his father said, while the boy busied himself fastening the door—“Well, Louis, I hope you have finished your task?”
“I have, father.”
“Very good; to-morrow I will look and see if you have earned your breakfast.” So saying, the elder Beethoven went into his chamber; his wife followed him, after bidding her sons good night, Louis more tenderly than any of them. Carl and Johann withdrew with their brother to their common sleeping apartment, entertaining him with a description of their day of festivity. “Now, Louis,” said little Johann, as they finished their account, “if you had not been such a dunce, our father would have taken you along; but he says he thinks that you will be little better than a dunce all the days of your life—and self-willed and stubborn besides.”
“Don’t talk about that any more!” answered Louis, “but come to bed!”
“Yes, you are always a sleepy head!” cried they both, laughing; but in a few moments after getting into bed, both were asleep, and snoring heartily.
Louis took the lamp from the table, left the apartment softly, and went up stairs to an attic chamber, where he was wont to retire when he wished to be out of the way of his teasing brothers. He had fitted up the little room for himself as well as his means permitted. A table with three legs, a leathern chair, the bottom partly out, and an old piano, which he had rescued from the possession of rats and mice, made up the furniture; and here, in company with his beloved violin, he was accustomed to pass his happiest hours. He was passionately fond of solitude, and nothing would have better pleased him, than permission to take long walks in the country, where he could hear the murmur of streams and the rustling of foliage, and the surging of the winds on the mountains. But he had not that liberty. His only recreation was to pass a few hours here in his favorite pursuit, indulging his fantasies and reveries, undisturbed by his noisy brothers, or his strict father’s reproof.
The boy felt, young as he was, that he was not understood by one of his family, not even excepting his mother. She loved him tenderly, and always took his part when his father found fault with him; but she never knew what was passing in his mind, because he never uttered it. How could he, shy and inexperienced, clothe in words what was burning in his bosom—what was perpetually striving after a language more intense and expressive than human speech? But his genius was not long to be unappreciated.