He had then completed the object of his whole life. He had tasted perfect Joy. Would he be able to rest on this triumph of the soul which ruled the tempest? Certainly he ought to feel the relief from the days of his past anguish. Indeed his last quartets are full of strange forebodings. But it seems that the victory of the _Ninth Symphony_ had left its glorious traces in its nature. The plans which he had for the future:[69] the _Tenth_ _Symphony_,[70] the overture on the name of BACH, the music for Grillparzer's _Melusina_,[71] for Körner's _Odyssey_ and Goethe's _Faust_,[72] the Biblical oratorio of _Saul and David_, all shew that he was attracted by the mighty serenity of the old German masters--Bach and Handel--and more still to the light of the South--the South of France or Italy, where he hoped to travel.[73] Dr. Spiker, who saw him in 1826, said that his face had become smiling and jovial. The same year when Grillparzer spoke to him for the last time, it was Beethoven who had more energy than the worn-out poet: "Ah!" said the latter, "if I had a thousandth part of your strength and determination." Times were hard; the monarchial reaction oppressed their spirits. "The censors have killed me," groaned Grillparzer. "One must go to North America if one wishes to speak freely." But no power could put a stop to Beethoven's thoughts. "Words are bound in chains, but, happily, sounds are still free," he wrote to the poet Kuffner. Beethoven's is the great voice of freedom, perhaps the only one then of the whole of German thought. He felt it. Often he spoke of the duty which was imposed on him to act by means of his art "for poor humanity, for humanity to come, to restore its courage and to shake off its lassitude and cowardice." "At the present time," he wrote to his nephew, "there is need for mighty spirits to lash into action these wretched rebellious human souls." Dr. Müller said in 1827 that "Beethoven always expressed himself freely on the subjects of government, the police, the aristocracy, even in public. The police knew him but they looked on his criticisms and satires as harmless fancies, and they did not care to interfere with the man whose genius had such an extraordinary reputation."[74] Thus nothing was able to break this indomitable will. It seemed now to make sport of grief. The music written in these last years, in spite of the painful circumstances under which it was composed,[75] has often quite a new, ironical character of heroic and joyous disdain. The very last piece that he finished, the new _Finale_ to the _Quartet, Op. 130_, is very gay. This was in November 1826, four months before his death. In truth this gaiety is not of the usual kind; for at times it is the harsh and spasmodic laughter of which Moscheles speaks; often it is the affecting smile, the result of suffering conquered. It matters not; he is the conqueror. He does not believe in death.