In October Breuning wrote to Wegeler: “Beethoven is at present in Silesia with Prince Lichnowsky and will not return till near the end of this month. His circumstances are none of the best at present, since his opera, owing to the cabals of his opponents, was performed but seldom, and therefore yielded him nothing. His spirits are generally low and, to judge by his letters, the sojourn in the country has not cheered him.” This visit to the Prince came to an abrupt termination in a scene which has been a fruitful theme for the silly race of musical novelette writers. The simple truth is related by Seyfried in the appendix to his “Studien” (page 23) and is here copied literally except for a few additional words interspersed, derived by the present writer from a conversation with the daughter of Moritz Lichnowsky: When he (Beethoven) did not feel in the mood it required repeated and varied urgings to get him to sit down to the pianoforte. Before he began playing he was in the habit of hitting the keys with the flat of his hand, or running a single finger up and down the keyboard, in short, doing all manner of things to kill time and laughing heartily, as was his wont, at the folly. Once while spending a summer with a Mæcenas at his countryseat, he was so pestered by the guests (French officers), who wished to hear him play, that he grew angry and refused to do what he denounced as menial labor. A threat of arrest, made surely in jest, was taken seriously by him and resulted in Beethoven’s walking by night to the nearest city, Troppau, whence he hurried as on the wings of the wind by extra post to Vienna.[36] In the “Grenzboten,” Vol. XVI, No. 14, April 3, 1857, Fräulein Giannatasio del Rio relates that, in 1816, Beethoven told how once during the invasion when the Prince had a number of Frenchmen as his guests, he (the Prince) repeatedly tried to coerce him to play for them on the pianoforte and that he had stoutly refused; which led to a scene between him and the Prince, whereupon B. indiscreetly and suddenly left the house.--He once said that it is easy to get along with nobility, but it was necessary to have something to impress them with.