In a year his gracious presence, superb voice and rare skill as a musician, pushed him to the front and into favor with the powers, with a yearly salary of four hundred guilders. The history of this man is a deal better raw stock for a romance than the life of his grandson. From Seventeen Hundred Thirty-two, when he entered the court as an unknown and ordinary musician with an acceptable tenor voice, to Seventeen Hundred Sixty-one, when he was Kapellmeister and a member of the private council of the Elector, his life was a steady march successward. Strong men were needed then as now, and his promotion was deserved. Various accounts and mention of this man are to be found, and one contemporary described him as he appeared at sixty. The only mark of age he carried was his flowing white hair. His smoothly shaven face showed the strong features of a man of thirty-five; and his carriage, actions and superb grace as an orchestra-leader made him a conspicuous figure in any company. Ludvig van Biethofen had one son, Johann by name. This boy resembled his gifted father very little, and his training was such that he early fell a victim to arrested development. If a parent does everything for a child, the child probably will never do anything for himself. It is Nature's plan--she seems to think that no one needs strength excepting the struggler, and being kind she comes to his rescue; but the man who puts forth no effort remains a weakling to the end. Johann placed success beyond his reach very early in life by putting an enemy into his mouth to steal away his brains. His marriage to a daughter of a cook in Ehrenbreitstein Castle did not stop his waywardness, or give him decision as was hoped. Marriage as a scheme of reformation is not always a success, and women who lend themselves to it take great chances. Mary Magdalena was a widow, and some say possessed of wiles. That she was beneath Johann in social station, but beyond him in actual worth, there is no doubt. And whether she snared the incautious man, or whether the marriage was arranged by the elder Biethofen as a diplomatic move in the interests of morality, matters little. The end justifies the means; and as a net result of this mating, without putting forward the circumstance as a precedent to be religiously followed, the world has Beethoven and his work. * * * * *