Very marked was his unconventionality in social relations. So profound was his sense of personal worth and of the fatuity of arbitrary class-distinctions that no aristocrat ever regarded his birth and breeding, no plutocrat ever regarded his wealth, with more intense pride than Beethoven felt in his democratic independence and self-sufficiency. That was a characteristic answer he made the court, in one of his numerous lawsuits, when asked if the “van” in his name indicated nobility. “_My_ nobility,” he said, “is here and here”--pointing to his head and heart. When he was offered a Prussian order, as a recognition of his artistic achievements, he preferred a payment of fifty ducats, and took the opportunity to express his contempt for some people’s “longing and snapping after ribands.” When his brother Johann, a stupid but prosperous worldling, sent him a New Year’s card signed “Johann van Beethoven, Land-owner,” he returned it with the added inscription: “Ludwig van Beethoven, Brain-owner.” But this wholesome self-respect, the result of a faith in himself and a discrimination between essences and accidents too rare among men, sometimes became exaggerated by passion into an impatient, egotistical pride less pleasant to note. When the court just mentioned, for example, refused, on the ground of his being a commoner, to hear his case, he was so angry that he threatened to leave the country--a reaction as childish as it was futile. On receiving, late in life, an honorary diploma from the Society of Friends of Music in the Austrian Empire, his impulse was to return it, because he had not been earlier recognized. Nor was he inclined to forgive readily a fancied slight to his dignity; he was always getting embroiled with his friends on account of some insult he read into their conduct. He was indeed too often the slave, instead of the master, of his own sensitiveness, and though his point of view as an individualist was higher than that of the herd, it had its own peculiar limitations. This is clearly illustrated by the following passage in one of his letters: “Kings and princes can indeed create professors and privy-councillors, and confer titles and decorations, but they cannot make great men--spirits that soar above the base turmoil of this world. When two persons like Goethe and myself meet, these grandees cannot fail to perceive what such as we consider great. Yesterday, on our way home, we met the whole imperial family; we saw them coming some way off, when Goethe withdrew his arm from mine, in order to stand aside; and say what I would, I could not prevail on him to make another step in advance. I pressed down my hat more firmly on my head, buttoned up my great-coat, and, crossing my arms behind me, I made my way through the thickest portion of the crowd. Princes and courtiers formed a lane for me; Archduke Rudolph took off his hat, and the Empress bowed to me first. These great ones of the earth _know me_. To my infinite amusement, I saw