The greater part of the oratorio, and also of "Fidelio," was composed at Hetzendorf, a pretty little village near the imperial summer palace of Schönbrunn. Here Beethoven passed several summers in the greatest retirement--wandering all day long, from early dawn to nightfall, amid the leafy glades of the park. His favourite seat was between two immense boughs of an old oak, which branched out from the parent stem about two feet from the ground. This memorable tree, endeared to Beethoven as the birthplace of many a thought, was afterwards visited by him, in Schindler's company, in 1823. In 1802 a gleam of hope dawned upon the sufferer; his deafness was for a time cured by the skilful treatment of Dr. Schmidt (to whom, out of gratitude, he dedicated his Septet arranged as a Trio), by whose advice he went for the summer to the village of Heiligenstadt, in the hope that the calm, sweet influence of nature, to which he was at all times most sensitive, might act beneficially upon his troubled mind. This spot--this _consecrated town_--must always be an object of veneration to those who cherish the name of Beethoven, for here it was that he wrote his remarkable will, or promemoria, a document which excites our warmest sympathy, revealing, as it does, the depths of that great heart. "TO MY BROTHERS, CARL AND ---- BEETHOVEN.[28]--O ye who consider or represent me as unfriendly, morose, and misanthropical, how unjust are you to me! you know not the secret cause of what appears thus to you. "My heart and mind have been from childhood given up to the tender feeling of benevolence, and I have ever been disposed to accomplish something great. But only consider that for six years I have been afflicted by a wretched calamity, which was aggravated by unskilful physicians--deceived from year to year by the hope of amendment--now forced, at length, to the contemplation of a _lingering disease_ (the cure of which will, perhaps, last for years, if indeed it be not an impossibility). "Born with a passionate, lively temperament, keenly susceptible to the pleasures of society, I was obliged at an early age to isolate myself, and to pass my life in loneliness.