“And yet you have written the opera?”
“I have completed it, but not to my own satisfaction. And I shall object to its being produced first at Vienna.”
“Why so? The Viennese are your friends.”
“For that very reason I will not appeal to their judgment; I want an impartial one. I distrust my genius for the opera.”
“How can that be possible?”
“It is my intimacy with Salieri that has inclined me that way; nature did not suggest it; I can never feel at home there. Ferdinand, I am self-upbraided, and should be, were the applause of a thousand spectators sounding in my ears.”
“Nay,” said the student, “the artist assumes too much who judges himself.”
“But I have not judged myself.”
“Who then has dared insinuate a doubt of your success?”
Beethoven hesitated; his impressions, his convictions, would seem superstition to his companion, and he was not prepared to encounter either raillery or ridicule. Just then, the host with a party of the guests met them, exclaiming that they had been everywhere sought; that the company was all assembled in the saloon, and everything ready for the exhibition.