At that time Beethoven gave lessons to Archduke Rudolph, a brother of Emperor Franz. I once asked him if the Archduke played well. “When he is feeling just right,” was the answer, accompanied by a smile. He also laughingly referred to the fact that he would sometimes hit him on the fingers, and that when the august gentleman once tried to refer him to his place, he pointed for justification to a passage from a poet, Goethe, I think. It must have been a mistake of the young lady’s to make Beethoven speak here in the present tense; for it is incredible that he should have taken such a liberty in 1816-17, when Rudolph was a man of some thirty years; or indeed at any time after the first lessons in his boyhood. The anecdote therefore in some degree supports the conjecture above offered. So also does Schindler’s statement--a point on which he was likely to be well informed by the master himself--that the pianoforte part of the Triple Concerto, Op. 56, was written for the Archduke; for this work was sketched, at the latest, in the spring of 1805, and surely would not have been undertaken until the composer thoroughly knew his pupil’s powers, and that his performance would do the master no discredit. And finally, what Ries relates is in the tone of one who had personal knowledge of the circumstances detailed; and thus determines the date as not later than 1804: Etiquette and all that is connected with it was never known to Beethoven [?] nor was he ever willing to learn it. For this reason he often caused great embarrassment in the household of Archduke Rudolph when he first went to him. An attempt was made by force to teach him to have regard for certain things. But this was intolerable to him; he would promise, indeed, to mend his ways but--that was the end of it. Finally one day when, as he expressed it, he was being tutored [~als man ihn, wie er es nannte, hofmeisterte~] he angrily forced his way to the Archduke and flatly declared that while he had the greatest reverence for his person, he could not trouble himself to observe all the regulations which were daily forced upon him. The Archduke laughed good-naturedly and commanded that Beethoven be permitted to go his own gait undisturbed--it was his nature and could not be altered. At all events it may be accepted as certain that Beethoven had now, 1805-6, formed those relations with the Archduke, which were strengthened and more advantageous to him with each successive year, until death put an end to them.