received such scant courtesy in respect to fires, attendance and the like (being also asked to pay board) that he was forced to return to his home in Vienna. The use of the family carriage was denied him and he was therefore compelled to ride in an open carriage to the nearest post station--an exposure which resulted in his fatal illness. Young Carl, who became the precious charge of the composer upon Caspar’s death, was intolerable. Beethoven sought, with an almost desperate courage, to bring the boy into paths of manhood and virtue, making plans for his schooling, for his proper acquaintance, and for his advancement. Carl was deaf, apparently, to all accents of affection and devotion, as well as to the occasional outbursts of fury from his uncle. He perpetually harassed him by his looseness, frivolity, continual demands for money, and lack of sensibility; and finally he attempted to take his own life. This last stroke was almost too much for the uncle, who gave way to his grief. Beethoven was, doubtless, but poorly adapted to the task of schoolmaster or disciplinarian; but he was generous, forgiving to a fault, and devoted to the ideal of duty which he conceived to be his. But the charge was from the beginning a constant source of anxiety and sorrow, altering his nature, causing trouble with his friends, and embittering his existence by constant disappointments and contentions. Some uncertainties exist concerning Beethoven’s relations with his teachers. The court organist, van den Eeden, was an old man, and could scarcely have taught the boy more than a year before he was handed over to Neefe, who was a good musician, a composer, and a writer on musical matters. He undoubtedly gave his pupil a thoroughly honest grounding in essentials, and, what was of even greater importance, he showed a confidence in the boy’s powers that must have left a strong impression upon his sensitive nature. ‘This young genius,’ he writes, when Beethoven was about twelve years old, ‘deserves some assistance that he may travel. If he goes on as he has begun, he will certainly become a second Mozart.’ During Neefe’s tutelage Beethoven was appointed accompanist to the opera band--an office which involved a good deal of responsibility and no pay--and later assistant court organist. His compositions, however, even up to the time of his departure for Vienna, do not at all compare, either in number or significance, with those belonging to the first twenty-two years of Mozart’s life. This fact, however, did not dampen the confidence of the teacher, who seems to have exerted the strongest influence of an academic nature which ever came into the composer’s life. Upon leaving Bonn, Beethoven expresses his obligation. ‘Thank you,’ he says, ‘for the counsel you have so often given me in my progress in my divine art. Should I ever become a great man, you will certainly have assisted in it.’[52]