[Sidenote: ILL FEELING BETWEEN BEETHOVEN AND HUMMEL] The Mass was produced on the next day--the 13th. “It was the custom at this court,” says Schindler, that after the religious service the local as well as foreign musical notabilities met in the chambers of the Prince for the purpose of conversing with him about the works which had been performed. When Beethoven entered the room, the Prince turned to him with the question: “But, my dear Beethoven, what is this that you have done again?” The impression made by this singular question, which was probably followed by other critical remarks, was the more painful on our artist because he saw the chapelmaster standing near the Prince laugh. Thinking that he was being ridiculed, nothing could keep him at the place where his work had been so misunderstood and besides, as he thought, where a brother in art had rejoiced over his discomfiture. He left Eisenstadt the same day. The laughing chapelmaster was J. N. Hummel, who had been called to the post in 1804 in place of Haydn, recently pensioned because of his infirmities, due to old age. Schindler continues: Thence dates the falling-out with Hummel, between whom and Beethoven there never existed a real intimate friendship. Unfortunately they never came to an explanation which might have disclosed that the unlucky laugh was not directed at Beethoven, but at the singular manner in which the Prince had criticized the mass (in which there is still much that might be complained of). But there were other things which fed the hate of Beethoven. One of these was that the two had an inclination for the same girl; the other, the tendency which Hummel had first introduced not only in pianoforte playing but also composition.... Not until the last days of Beethoven, ~post tot discrimina rerum~, was the cloud which had settled between the two artists dispelled. In the earlier editions of his book, Schindler gives a still gloomier tinge to the story: His hatred of Hummel because of this (the laugh after the mass) was so deeply rooted that I know of no second one like it in his entire history. After the lapse of 14 years he told me the story with a bitterness as if it had happened the day before. But this dark cloud was dissipated by the strength of his spirit, and this would have happened much earlier had Hummel approached him in a friendly manner instead of always holding himself aloof.