16. “My fatherland, the beautiful locality in which I saw the light of the world, appears before me vividly and just as beautiful as when I left you; I shall count it the happiest experience of my life when I shall again be able to see you, and greet our Father Rhine.”
(Vienna, June 29, to Wegeler, in Bonn.)
[In 1825 Beethoven said to his pupil Ries, “Fare well in the Rhine country which is ever dear to me,” and in 1826 wrote to Schott, the publisher in Mayence, about the “Rhine country which I so long to see again.”]
17. “Bruhl, at ‘The Lamb’—how lovely to see my native country again!”
(Diary, 1812-1818.)
18. “A little house here, so small as to yield one’s self a little room,—only a few days in this divine Bruehl,—longing or desire, emancipation or fulfillment.”
(Written in 1816 in Bruehl near Modling among the sketches for the
Scherzo of the pianoforte sonata op. 10.)
[Like many another ejaculatory remark of Beethoven’s, it is difficult to understand. See Appendix. H. E. K.]
19. “When you reach the old ruins, think that Beethoven often paused there; if you wander through the mysterious fir forests, think that. Beethoven often poetized, or, as is said, composed there.”
(In the fall of 1817, to Mme. Streicher, who was at a cure in Baden.)