The two stepped into a small, narrow, meanly furnished apartment, where they were welcomed with a loud cry of joy by a little four-year-old boy, who stretched out both his little hands to his mother. He may have been somewhat timid in the dark room, and the sight of his mother returning with the light elicited from him the outcry. It had little consolation for the father, however, for when the child saw him he shrank back afraid, and hid his face in the folds of his mother’s dress.
“Be polite, Ludwig, dear child,” she said kindly to him. “It is your father. Give him a pat of the hand.”
The boy timidly stretched out his hand, but his father did not take it. It was evident the child’s conduct had displeased him, for his eyes were again gloomy and his brows wrinkled.
“It’s of no use,” he said, repulsing the mother, who sought to conciliate her husband. “I know already what you will say, ‘Children are children, and I’—well, certainly I am not always the tenderest of fathers to his own. But how can one be so when there is nothing for him but poverty, wretchedness, and thirstiness?”
Ill-humoredly he threw off his cloak, and with a gloomy countenance paced to and fro in the narrow chamber. Ludwig and his mother quietly withdrew to a corner. She could scarcely keep back the tears. Her little son clung to her anxiously and tenderly.
Some minutes passed in gloomy, oppressive stillness. At last Johann Beethoven, without saying a word, seated himself at the piano and touched the keys. The tender tones which he drew from the instrument seemed gradually to allay his agitation and brighten his darkened countenance. He played on, and finally began the pleasant melody of a folk-song, gently humming it at first, and then singing it with the full power of his voice.
Upon hearing the first tones of the song, the little Ludwig raised his head and fixed his gaze with rapt attention and glistening eyes upon his father. As he began to sing aloud, the boy got down from his mother’s lap and, step by step, unheard by his father, approached him, until he stood close by his side, and clung to him as tenderly as he had clung to his mother a moment before. All his fears were dispelled by the soothing, gentle tones of the music. He listened only to them. All else was buried and forgotten. His eyes were raised to heaven, he stood transfixed, and his young soul fluttered, as if on wings, among the soft modulations of the simple yet heart-stirring, beautiful melody of the song.
His father stopped abruptly, turned round, and saw the child standing near him, as it were, in a kind of ecstasy.
“Ha! Ludwig, are you dreaming?” he asked, not harshly as before, but with an entirely changed and softer tone.
“No, father, I was only listening to you,” replied the child, “and it seemed to me that I heard an angel singing in heaven. It was beautiful. Oh, if I could only play something too!”