Sometimes, however, his naturally vivacious spirits prevailed, and he became witty, satirical, 'a fellow of infinite jest.' Anything in the way of bad music was apt to send him into shouts of laughter; but "of Handel, Bach and Mozart he always spoke with the greatest reverence, and, although he would not allow his own great works to be depreciated, he himself made fun of his lesser productions. If greatly roused, he would let loose a perfect flood of hard-hitting witticisms, droll paradoxes and ideas." (Rochlitz.)
Still, albeit generous to a fault, and ready to give away his last thaler even to an enemy, his dislikes were so violent that he would actually take to his heels at the sight of some special object of aversion.
With particularly favoured friends, in the privacy of their own homes, Beethoven was less reticent than usual. He would discuss with them his two great regrets—that he had never visited England and had never married; which were his favourite topics of conversation. It is true that at forty-five—his present age—these regrets might still have time to be obliterated. But he felt himself the very Simeon Stylites of music, set apart to suffer in ascetic endurance upon a pillar of aloofness and despair.
And it was in this melancholy frame of mind—a reaction from the transient mirth of the evening—that the master buttoned his old grey coat about him and trudged gloomily homeward as the evening star first lighted itself. "O God, Thou lookest downward on my inward soul!" he murmured, "Thou knowest, Thou seest that love for my fellow-men, and all kindly feelings have their abode there! ... But I have no real friends; I must live alone. But I know that God is nearer to me than to many others in my art, and I commune with Him fearlessly."
Drawing a scrap of paper towards him, he scrawled a few heartfelt words upon it by the last rays of twilight:—
"I must praise Thy goodness that Thou hast left nothing undone to draw me to Thyself. It pleased Thee, early, to make me feel the heavy hand of Thy wrath, and by many chastisements to bring my proud heart low. Sickness and other misfortunes hast Thou caused to hang over me, to bring my straying from Thee to my remembrance.... But one thing I ask of Thee, my God—not to cease Thy work in my improvement ... Let me tend towards Thee, no matter by what means—and be fruitful in good works...."
And Ludwig van Beethoven had a means of "communing fearlessly" with his Creator, which, for him, was perhaps, as direct a road as prayer, if laborare est orare. For music, "although in its glorious fulness and power at that time unknown, was associated intimately by the early Christian writers with Christianity—with immortality." As Wagner has declared, music is of the "essential nature of things, and its kingdom is not of this world... Its spirit, like that of Christianity, is love." And by this medium, and in this divine language, the man whose outward senses were being darkened, now held, in the rapture of the "inward light," his intercourse with celestial things.
Baulked and baffled by circumstances—dragged at the chariot-wheels of relentless Fate—shut up and shut off from all sweet human amenities, the tone-artist sat down at his piano, and "after preluding softly with one hand ... poured out his soul in a very flood of harmony." At first the strains were mournful, sombre, disconnected, his own sad thoughts bearing a perpetual burden to him.
"O Providence," so he prayed, "let one more day of pure joy be vouchsafed to me! The echo of true happiness has so long been a stranger to my heart! When, when, O God! shall I again be able to feel it in the temple of nature and of man? Never? No! O, that were too hard!"
But presently he became buried in a deeper abstraction; a sphinx-like calm settled on, and smoothed out, his harsh, rough features. With the ease and firmness of a brilliant executant—with the intense feeling of an inspired artist, he continued to improvise the most glorious music which had issued that day from either his brain or his fingers. It was, like the Allegro Finale of the C sharp minor Quartet, "the dance of the world itself: wild delight, the lamentation of anguish, ecstasy of love, highest rapture, misery, rage, voluptuousness and sorrow." This great gift of extemporising, (which was only paralleled by his equal skill in sight-reading) was at once the solace and the snare of Beethoven. Hours upon hours could thus be dreamed away; yet who shall say that they were wasted? For gradually, out of the shifting panorama of rhythm and sound, a supreme and marvellous melody evolved itself.