In his contact with these wretched relatives Beethoven was not supported by a comfortable, congenial home. A bachelor, poor, absent-minded, and engrossed in abstract pursuits, he was at the mercy of rapacious landlords and self-seeking or incompetent servants. After 1816, when, largely for his nephew’s sake, he began keeping house, he was given hardly a moment of ease by what he called his “domestic rabble.” His letters are full of indignant protests or half-humorous jibes against the old “witch,” or “Satanas,” as he called his housekeeper--a half-crazy beldame who not only neglected his table and let the dust thicken on his books, but on one occasion actually used the manuscript of a part of his great Mass to wrap around old boots. “My dear Son,” he writes (it was thus that he habitually addressed his nephew), “It is impossible to permit this to continue any longer; no soup to-day, no beef, no eggs, and at last _broiled meat_ from the inn! Little as I require what nourishes the body, as you know, still the present state of things is really too bad, besides being every moment in danger of being poisoned.” Another time he exclaims: “Here comes _Satanas_.... What a reproach to our civilization to stand in need of a class like this, and to have those whom we despise constantly near us.” How must Beethoven have felt when the nephew whom he had trusted as a son descended so low as to borrow money surreptitiously from, this very “Satanas”? “Last Sunday,” he writes, “you again borrowed 1 florin 15 kreutzers from the housekeeper, from a mean old kitchen wench,--this was already forbidden,--and it is the same in all things. What avail even the most gentle reproofs? They merely serve to embitter you. But do not be uneasy; I shall continue to care for you as much as ever.”