Troubles now began to gather about him. About 1800 his hearing became defective, and the malady grew steadily from bad to worse, so that by 1816 he was obliged to use an ear-trumpet, and by 1822 he was stone-deaf. To add to his discomforts, his brothers Karl and Johann treated him shamefully, and a son of the former, to whom he was left guardian at the father’s death, and upon whom he lavished a father’s care, turned out a scapegrace, repaying his affection with the basest ingratitude. Weighed down by these misfortunes, Beethoven became irritable and morbid, distrusting his most faithful friends, and constantly imagining plots against himself. His utter ignorance of worldly matters, too, brought him into financial troubles, and involved his domestic affairs in a state of continual confusion. =Second Period=.—Yet, as if to prove man’s ability to rise superior to every affliction, during this very time he was writing compositions which, for joyous freshness and spiritual elevation, have been scarcely, if ever, equalled. During his second period, extending to 1815, and including his compositions to about opus 90, he adopted a _freedom of expression_ entirely untrammelled by formal limitations, enlarging and vivifying the Sonata Form, and varying it to suit his changing moods. The joy of living, with its intensity of passion and depths of emotion, is reflected in these works, which assert a character strong in its struggle against adverse fate, confidently looking toward the goal of ultimate good. =Compositions of this Period=.—His most popular symphonies were written during this period, which embraces those from the third to the eighth, inclusive. The “Eroica,” number three, was originally written in homage to Napoleon, whom Beethoven honored as the guide of the French nation toward that assertion of independence and individuality which he dearly loved; but when the news arrived that Napoleon was declared Dictator, in 1804, he tore up the dedicatory page in a fit of anger. Another of his greatest compositions was his opera of “Fidelio,” upon which Beethoven spent an amazing amount of time and pains, whose overture he rewrote twice. Produced in Vienna, in 1805, soon after the occupation of the city by the French, it was received coldly; and only after several revisions did it score a success at all in keeping with its grand and inspiring conception. Several orchestral overtures; his violin concerto; an oratorio; a mass in C; some of his best chamber music, including the celebrated Rasumovsky string quartets; and his piano concertos in G and E-flat, were other fruits of about this time. Of fourteen piano sonatas, we find several which have continued in unbroken popularity, notably the two in opus 27, the “Pastorale,” opus 28, the “Waldstein,” opus 53, and the “Appassionata.”