His whole life is like a stormy day. At the beginning--a fresh clear morning, perhaps a languid breeze, scarcely a breath of air. But there is already in the still air a secret menace, a dark foreboding. Large shadows loom and pass; tragic rumblings; murmuring awesome silences; the furious gusts of the winds of the _Eroica_ and the _C minor_. However, the freshness of the day is not yet gone. Joy remains joy; the brightness of the sky is not overcast; sadness is never without a ray of hope. But after 1810 the poise of the soul is disturbed. A strange light glows. Mists obscure his deepest thoughts; some of the clearer thoughts appear as vapour rising; they disappear, are dispelled, yet form anew; they obscure the heart with their melancholy and capricious gloom; often the musical idea seems to vanish entirely, to be submerged, but only to re-appear again at the end of a piece in a veritable storm of melody. Even joy has assumed a rough and riotous character. A bitter feeling becomes mingled in all his sentiments.[82] Storms gather as evening comes on. Heavy clouds are big with tempests. Lightning flashes o'er the black of night. The climax of the hurricane is approaching. Suddenly, at the height of the tempest, the darkness is dispersed. Night is driven away and the clear, tranquil atmosphere is restored by a sheer act of will power. What a conquest was this! What Napoleonic battle can be likened to it? What was Austerlitz glory to the radiance of this superhuman effort, this victory, the most brilliant that has ever been won by an infirm and lonely spirit. Sorrow personified, to whom the world refused joy, created joy himself to give to the world. He forged it from his own misery, as he proudly said in reviewing his life. And indeed it was the motto of his whole heroic soul: JOY THROUGH SUFFERING (To Countess Erdödy, October 19th, 1815). * * * * * FOOTNOTES: [1] J. Russell (1822). Charles Czerny who, when a child, saw him in 1801 with a beard of several days' growth, hair bristling, wearing a waistcoat and trousers of goats' wool, thought he had met Robinson Crusoe. [2] The painter Kloeber's remark, when he painted his portrait about 1818. [3] Dr. W. C. Müller observed particularly "his fine eloquent eyes sometimes so kind and tender, at other times so wild, threatening and awe inspiring" (1820). [4] Kloeber said "Ossian's." All these details are taken from notes of Beethoven's friends, or from travellers who saw him, such as Czerny, Moscheles, Kloeber, Daniel Amadeus Atterbohm, W. C. Müller, J. Russel, Julius Benedict, Rochlitz, etc.