This appeal settled the business of the poet; he walked the room, sighed, tore his _mouchoir_, oscillated between honor and temptation--the angel form and syren tongue of the woman triumphed. In course of a dozen hours, Bertha, the lovely, enchanting _spy_, opened the secret drawers of the poet's secretary, and amid carefully-packed literary rubbish, the dreaded _memorial_ was found--clutched with the eagerness of a death-reprieve to a poor felon upon the verge of eternity, and with the despatch of an hundred swift relays, the poor author's manuscripts were placed in the hands of the mighty Emperor, and while he read their fearful purport, and flashed with rage or grew livid with each scathing word of the _memorial_, he hurriedly issued his orders--gain to this one, sacrifice to that one; while he made the spy a _countess_, he ordered hideous death to the poor poet and despair and misery to his children. "Fly!" the monarch shouted, "search every one suspected of a hand in this; let them be dealt with instantly--trouble me not with detail, but give me sure returns. Stop not, until this viper is exterminated; egg and tooth; fang and scale; see it done and claim my bounty--_fly!_" That _snake_ was scotched and killed--the few brief pages of an obscure author that drove sleep, appetite and peace from the mighty Emperor, for days and nights--made busy work for his thousands of emissaries--scattered his gold in weighty streams--was read, cursed and destroyed, and all suspected as having the slightest voice or opinion in the secret _memorial_, met a secret fate--death or prolonged wretchedness. Herr Beethoven, the poor author, alone escaped; being overlooked in the hot pursuit of his production, and by the blunder of those having charge of himself and hundreds of other state prisoners--guilty or _suspected_ opponents to the vaulting ambition and power of him that at last ended his own eventful career as a helpless prisoner upon an ocean isle--was liberated and lost no time in making his way beyond the reach of monarchs, tyranny and bondage. Beethoven came to America and settled in Philadelphia, where, in the humble capacity of an e-razer of beards and pruner of human mops, he eked out a reasonable existence for the residue of his earthly existence; few, perhaps, dreaming in their profoundest philosophy, that the little, eccentric-attired, grotesque-looking barber, who tweaked their plebeian noses and combed their caputs, once rejoiced in grand heraldic escutcheons upon his carriage panels as a veritable Count, and still later made the throne tremble beneath the feet of a second Alexander! But God is great, and the ways of our every-day life, full of change and mystery. The Bigger Fool, the Better Luck.