The Year 1813--Beethoven’s Journal--Death of Prince Kinsky--Beethoven’s Earnings--Mälzel and “Wellington’s Victory”--The A major Symphony--The Concerts of December 8 and 12. Short as Bettina’s stay in Vienna was, it occurred at the very crisis of Beethoven’s unlucky marriage project; and her society served a good purpose in distracting his thoughts; while her known relations to her future husband prevented the growth of any such feeling on his part as some have conjectured did really awaken. Next came the rather absurd affair with Fräulein Malfatti; but this was so little of an earnest nature[109] as in turn to be quite forgotten, so soon as the rejected lover came fairly under the influence of the remarkable mental and personal charms of Amalie von Sebald, in whom he found all that his warmest wishes could desire. The renewal in the last summer of his acquaintance with her completely cured him of his recent unfortunate passions, but, there is too much reason to believe, at the cost of plunging him into a new one, not the less powerful because utterly hopeless, and so firmly rooted that in 1816 “it was still as on the first day.” The so-called journal (~Tagebuch~) of the Fischoff MS. begins thus: Submission, absolute submission to your fate, only this can give you the sacrifice ... to the servitude--O, hard struggle! Turn everything which remains to be done to planning the long journey--you must yourself find all that your most blessed wish can offer, you must force it to your will--keep always of the same mind. ~Thou mayest no longer be a man~, not for thyself, only for others, ~for thee there is no longer happiness except in thyself, in thy art~--O God, give me strength to conquer myself, nothing must chain me to life. Thus everything connected with A will go to destruction. The date given is simply 1812; but the month of September in Teplitz suggests itself instantly for the first two paragraphs, and the time when Beethoven was busy with the Eighth Symphony for the other. The next-following in the manuscript is dated: May 13, 1813. To forgo a great act which might have been and remain so--O, what a difference compared with an unstudied life which often rose in my fancy--O fearful conditions which do not suppress my feeling for domesticity, but whose execution O God, God look down upon the unhappy B., do not permit it to last thus much longer-- Learn to keep silent, O friend! Speech is like silver, But to hold one’s peace at the right moment is pure gold.