has gone up from many a thousand hearts to the eternal throne; but who may presume to fathom the dispensations of a mysterious providence? or to question that wisdom which gives to every earthborn soul the necessary discipline for immortality? Let us rather wonder and adore, and—
"Know how sublime a thing it is
To suffer and be strong."
We left our young musician in the full flush of success, in apparently vigorous health, caressed and flattered by princes, without a rival as a virtuoso, and fast leaving all competitors behind him as a composer, when suddenly a cloud appears, the brightness is overcast, and darkness comes on apace. Beethoven became deaf.
For three years he had had premonitory fears, which were too sadly realized in the year 1801.
The loss of hearing is deprivation enough in ordinary cases; but to a young man of excitable artist temperament, and a musician! it seemed for a while worse than the loss of life itself. Our Beethoven writes thus to Wegeler:—
"If I had not read somewhere that man must not of his own free will depart this life, I should long ere this have been no more, and that through my own act."
From this despair he was mercifully rescued. The strong, secret voice within, impelling Beethoven onwards and upwards to that aim which he "felt, but could not describe," spoke now in more stirring accents and with more thrilling emphasis amid the profound silence and desolation of his nature.
He "was not disobedient" to the heavenly call; the triumph of mind was achieved; and from the dark prison-house the noblest strains the world has ever heard escaped to wake responsive echoes in the hearts of all who have felt and suffered.
But this victory was not gained without leaving behind it evident tokens of the struggle; distrust, suspicion, irritability, those constant attendants on deafness, haunted Beethoven day and night, poisoning his happiness, and casting their shadow over his childlike, benevolent disposition. Stephan Breuning writes thus of the alteration in his friend in a letter dated the 13th of November, 1806:—"You cannot realize the indescribable impression made upon Beethoven by the loss of his hearing. Imagine, with his excitable temperament, the feeling of unhappiness, added to reserve, distrust of his best friends, and indecision in many things. In general, intercourse with him is a positive exertion, in which it is impossible to feel entirely at one's ease; the occasions on which his old true nature shows itself are few indeed."
Schindler, also his friend and biographer, describes him as being "like a child, devoid of all experience, suddenly cast upon this earth from some ideal world; like a ball, tossed from one hand to another; consequently, at the mercy of other people. And," he adds, "so Beethoven remained throughout his whole life."