“Impossible!” exclaimed Beethoven.
“I thought so,” joyfully said the Hofrathin.
“Fine! splendid!” cried all the others.
Beethoven was so overcome with astonishment that he seemed as rigid as a statue, but at a sign from the Count, chapelmaster Ries opened the envelope, showed the signature of the Elector, and the appointment of Ludwig van Beethoven as court organist, carefully drawn up in due form.
“Hearty congratulations, Ludwig,” said he, handing the document to him. “I call this good fortune, even if it does come to the one most deserving of it.”
All present surrounded Beethoven and congratulated him. He received their good wishes with a radiant smile and beaming eyes. Then he suddenly rushed to Count Waldstein, pressed his lips to his hand, and exclaimed to him from the fulness of his heart, “Thanks! thanks! my benefactor!” Thereupon he seized his hat, crying joyously, “To my mother, to my good mother! Good-night to all!”—and was out of the house as quick as a flash.
No one wondered at his somewhat strange behavior. All knew him and his ways and manners, and all were his friends, which signified for him all that was sincerely true and good.
A Merciful Punishment
Good fortune often arouses jealousies and enmities, for while there are many good men in the world, there are also many base and evil-minded ones. Beethoven was destined to make this discovery at once. His appointment as court organist was received by most of the members of the electoral chapel with expressions of great discontent, and some of them did not conceal their resentment that such a green young student should have been selected as their colleague. Of course it never occurred to these narrow-minded persons that there was more creative skill in this “green student” than in the whitening heads of all these old musical pedants.
Beethoven was one who troubled himself very little about such displays of petty hatred and jealousy. As he was exempt from the pressing anxieties of everyday life by his position and teaching, and had found in Count Waldstein a truly good and fatherly patron, he carried his head high, and looked down with proud self-assurance upon his enemies. Not that he had grown supercilious,—nothing was farther from him than that,—but he could clearly discriminate between himself and these malicious ones. He knew that he surpassed them as far as the heavens are above the earth.