At night the afflicted family gathered round the bed of the dying. “My Louis!” said Beethoven, faintly. The boy was kneeling by the bed, pale as the sick man himself. He clasped his father’s cold hand and pressed it to his lips, but could not speak for tears.
“God’s best blessings be upon you, my son!” said his parent. “Promise me that throughout life you will never forsake your brothers; I know they have not loved you as they ought; that is partly my fault; promise me that whatever may happen, you will continue to regard and cherish them.”
“I will—I will, dear father!” cried Louis, sobbing. Beethoven pressed his hand in token of satisfaction. The same night he expired. The grief of Louis was unbounded. It was a bitter thing thus to lose a parent just as the ties of nature were strengthened by mutual appreciation and confidence; but it was necessary that he should rouse himself to minister support and comfort to his suffering mother.
The first keenness of his sorrow was blunted by time; and he returned with renewed diligence to his studies. His mother often remonstrated against his pursuit of them with such absorbing eagerness. “You will injure your health, my beloved son,” she would say. But he would answer cheerfully, “Be not uneasy, dear mother; the winter will soon be past, and when spring comes I will relax my labors.”
Louis was now in his eighteenth year; and the period was memorable in his life. A young kinswoman of his mother, whose parents lived in Cologne, came on a visit to Bonn. Adelaide was a beautiful, sprightly girl. Louis saw her, and it seemed to him that all his previous existence was but a void, and that his real being had but just begun. He was conscious of a thousand new perceptions, and thought he had never before felt or seen what was in the world. Nature had new charms for him; he had capacities for joy before undreamed of. As for music, till now, it seemed to him the spirit of art had slumbered within him. How magnificent was her awakening! The magic name of Adelaide, her voice, her smile, called his genius into full life, and he felt that he had power to do as he had never done.
First love! Is it not a misnomer? for but once can the heart bow to the all-subduing influence! Once cold can it ever be warmed again to that bright luxuriance of life and feeling? And how soon does the tender flower born of fantasy, wither in the breath of reality—never to bloom again! Memory of the lost paradise alone remains; it is well if there remain not also the saddest fruit of disappointment—a sceptical scorn of all that seems winning and lovely. Happy he whom fate deprives of the object of his love before the sweet illusion is over! No words can paint his heartfelt anguish at the loss. But one bliss is left him; the image of the beloved is still robed in its magic charms; his faith in his ideal is still unshaken. His heart has never proved the bitterest pang.
For a time our youthful hero was the happiest of the happy, for he yielded his soul to the sway of love, and music was its appropriate language. But Adelaide understood him not; how could she? His eyes indeed spoke a passion deeper than words could reveal; his melodies were of a bolder and higher, yet a tenderer cast; but it was only in the silence of his own apartment, when he sat playing alone, that these signs of emotion might have been discovered. In her presence he sought not to paint in language his devoted love; it was enough for him to look upon her, to watch her graceful movements, to listen to her voice. That was inspiration enough; he wished not for more.
The fair sex are not usually pleased with this species of mute homage; all maidens are not Cecilias; most of them prefer a lover bold enough to venture on an open confession of their power to charm. The fair dream Louis indulged was ere long to be rudely broken. I am not going to give the reader a melancholy love tale; suffice it to say the boy’s passion became known to his brother, Carl, and one evening he chanced to overhear a conversation between him and Adelaide. Carl was telling his cousin of Louis’s love for her, and laughing at his simplicity in never dreaming of declaring it. Adelaide laughed heartily at her “unsophisticated lover,” as she called him, saying she had never suspected such a thing—that she could not help pitying the poor boy—yet was half inclined to draw him out, it was such a capital joke! Carl joined in her merriment, and the two concerted a scheme for their own amusement at the expense of poor Louis.
Pale and trembling, while he leaned against the window-seat concealed by the folds of a curtain, Louis listened to this colloquy. As his brother and cousin left the room, he rushed past them to his own apartment, locked himself in, and did not come forth that night. Afterwards he took pains to shun the company of the heartless fair one; and was always out alone on his walks, or in his own room, where he worked every night till quite exhausted.