His temper was strong but not unjust. When his heart was touched rightly, it rose in great pity and devotion. When touched wrongly, it flamed up like a meteor of wrath. On one occasion, at least, he threw aside all restraint for the moment. One evening at a rehearsal, Beethoven’s patron, Prince Lobkowitz, ventured an assertion which grated very severely upon the composer’s sensibilities. At the end of the performance Beethoven is said to have run into the yard of his patron’s palace and to have shouted insult and ridicule at the man who, in his opinion, had committed so great an impropriety. He was not only a great composer and conductor, but a great pianist as well. He was also keenly sensitive as to his art and highly exacting in regard to the attitude of others toward it. Once when, in a private home, he was playing a duet with his pupil, Ferdinand Ries, two persons disturbed the performance by conversation. He immediately ceased playing and would neither play nor allow Ries to do so again during the evening. His music was to him an absorbing passion. No matter in what capacity he might be ministering at its shrine, he always did so with entire devotion. About 1813 an incident occurred in which his entire self-forgetfulness in his work caused him to play a ludicrous part. He was playing one of his own compositions in a public concert when he so far forgot himself as to think he conducting instead of playing. Leaving his seat, he began violently directing. He knocked the lights from the piano. Two boys were directed to hold the lights while the managers and audience waited for the seemingly mad man to become quiet. One of the boys, light and all, was soon floored by a blow in the mouth from the swinging arm of the musician. The other boy dodged and ducked in his efforts to escape a like fate, while the audience roared with mirth. Beethoven had a certain admiration for Napoleon Bonaparte as a soldier and statesman. The symphony now known as “Eroica” was written in Napoleon’s honor and was to bear his name. About the time of the completion of the first score, which was to be sent to the Corsican, the word came that its subject had proclaimed itself emperor. Beethoven at once tore the title from the score and changed the name of the composition to “Eroica.” Upon Napoleon’s death, he remarked that the symphony contained the funeral march of the conqueror.