In 1810 the Mass in C was performed for the first time at Eisenstadt, the residence of Prince Esterhazy, the grandson of Haydn's patron, in whose service Hummel was at the time as Kapellmeister. Esterhazy, accustomed only to the simple services and masses of the Haydn-Mozart school, did not know what to make of a production so totally different. Accordingly, at the _déjeuner_ afterwards given in the palace to the artists and dilettanti who had assembled for the occasion, he said, with a smile, to our composer, "Now, dear Beethoven, what is this that you have been about again?" The susceptible musician, not a little irritated at hearing his work so lightly spoken of, glanced towards Hummel, who happened to be standing by the Prince's side, wearing a peculiar smile, which seemed to Beethoven full of malicious pleasure. This was too much--the opinion of a fashionable worldling like Esterhazy was nothing to Beethoven, but that a brother in art should so misunderstand him--should rejoice at an apparent failure!--he rose abruptly, and quitted the palace. Such is the correct account of the rupture between Beethoven and Hummel, which lasted until a few days before the death of the former, when Hummel, hearing of his precarious state, hastened to Vienna to effect a reconciliation before it was too late.[32] Another version of the story is that the two composers were rivals for the hand of the same lady, and that Hummel, owing to Beethoven's deafness and his own better position as Kapellmeister, was the favoured suitor! The practice of tracing every event in our composer's life to a love affair is just as ridiculous as the opposite extreme of denying his capability for the tender passion. A more interesting incident in connection with the First Mass is that related by Schindler of the effect produced upon Beethoven by the reading of the German text composed for it by some poet, who, though unknown to fame, seems to have translated the master's thoughts from the language of Tones into that of Words, with power and truth. When Beethoven came to the "_Qui tollis_" his eyes overflowed with tears (the first and last time that he was ever seen so affected) as he exclaimed, "Thus I felt while composing this!" The tide of Beethoven's earthly renown and glory, which had been slowly rising for years, reached its height in 1813-14.