“The lad has found us out,” said Carl to his pretty cousin.
“What a pity!” answered Adelaide; “I should like to have brought him to reason in my own way, I confess. Such an excellent joke! It is really a pity!”
THE YOUTH.
The first emotions of chagrin and mortification soon passed away in the bosom of young Beethoven, but he did not soon recover his vivacity. His warmest feelings had been cruelly outraged; the spring of love was never again to bloom for him; and it seemed, too, that the fair blossoms of genius also were nipped in the bud. His self-confidence, so necessary to the development of the artist, was shaken—nay, had nearly deserted him.
The wings of his spirit had unfolded joyously in the sunshine of love, and were spread for a bold flight into the upper regions of Art, where the every-day world could not follow him. As in after life, he was entirely indifferent to the applause of the multitude, and never sought it. What he thought and felt he expressed in his enthusiastic inspiration; his best reward was the consciousness of having aimed at the best, and deserved the approbation of true artists.
If, however, the cultivated taste of the present day fails fully to appreciate him, it will not be wondered at that the critics of the time, fettered as they were to the established form, should have been shocked at his departure from their rules. Even Mozart, whose fame stood so high, whose name was pronounced with such enthusiastic admiration, what struggles had he not been forced into with those who would not approve his so called innovations!
The youth of nineteen had struck out a bolder path! What marvel, then, that instead of encouragement, nothing but censures awaited him? His master, Neefe, who was accustomed to boast of him as his pride and joy, now said coldly and bitterly, his pupil had not fulfilled his cherished expectations—nay, was so taken up with his new-fangled conceits, that he feared he was forever lost to real art.
“Is it so, indeed?” asked Louis of himself in his moments of misgiving and dejection. “Is all a delusion? have I lived till now in a false dream? Oh! where is truth on earth? I wish I were dead, since my life is worse than useless!”
Young Beethoven sat in his chamber, leaning his head on his hand, looking gloomily out of the vine-shaded window. There was a knock at the door: piano—pianissimo; crescendo,—forte,—fortissimo! Still, wrapped in his deep despondency, he heard it not, nor answered with a “come in.”