"And thus it has happened. Joyfully I hasten to meet death. Should he come before I have had the opportunity of developing the whole of my artistic capacity, he will have come too soon in spite of my hard fate, and I shall wish he had come a little later. But even in that case I shall be content. Will he not release me from a state of endless misery? Come when thou will'st! I go to meet thee with a brave heart. Farewell, and do not quite forget me even in death! I have deserved this, since during my lifetime I have often thought of you, and tried to make you happy. So be it. LUDVIG VAN BEETHOVEN. "_Heiligenstadt, 6th October_, 1802." "_Heiligenstadt, 10th October, 1802._--So I take leave of thee sorrowfully enough. Even the cherished hope, which I brought here with me of being cured, at least to a certain extent, has now utterly forsaken me. It has faded like the fallen leaves of autumn. Almost as I came here so do I depart. Even the lofty hope that upheld me during the beautiful summer days has vanished. O Providence! let one more day of pure joy be vouchsafed to me. The echo of true happiness has so long been a stranger to my heart!--When, when, O God! shall I again be able to feel it in the temple of nature and of man? Never?--no!--O that were too hard!" [Illustration: FIGURE OF BEETHOVEN ON VIENNA MONUMENT. Executed by Zumbusch. From a photograph. (See page 339.)] THE DEAFNESS OF BEETHOVEN [Illustration] One of the most painful of human spectacles is an intellect dominated by a physical ailment, a mind capable of the wise and useful exercise, of its powers enthralled or checked in its peripheral expression by some imperfection in the machinery in the midst of which it has its temporary abiding-place. The mental effects of bodily disease, in which the organs of special sense are concerned, have been nowhere more carefully noted than in the cases of those whose aptitude for some particular line of intellectual process has raised them above the average of their fellows, and the biographies of celebrated men seldom fail to record some instance of those ills to which flesh is heir and to make deductions therefrom as to its influence upon the life-work of the individual. There is no more pathetic picture than that of Beethoven in his later years, at an age when he should have been in the perfection of his physical manhood, deaf to overwhelming applause or striking in tumultuous discord the piano which to him was dumb.