Grillparzer’s opera-book was a frequent subject of conversation between Beethoven and his friends in the early months of 1824, but petitions and advice were alike unfruitful. He did not go to work upon it nor yet upon a composition which presented a more urgent obligation. This was the oratorio which he had agreed to write for the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde and on which he had received an advance of money in 1819. Here the fatal procrastination, though it may have been agreeable to Beethoven, was not altogether his fault. Bernard began the book, but seems to have put it aside after a few weeks. In April, 1820, he tells Beethoven in a Conversation Book, “I must finish the oratorio completely this month so that it may be handed to you in Mödling.” In August, possibly, somebody writes: “I have put it seriously to _Sanctus Bernardus_ that it is high time that it be done; that Hauschka was urging a completion. He will finish it this month, _id est_ in 5 days, and see you this evening at Camehl’s.... When I told Bernard that Hauschka had come to you about it he was embarrassed and--it seems to me that he is throwing the blame on you. He does not want to show his poetical impotency.” [Sidenote: GROWING IMPATIENCE ABOUT AN ORATORIO] For four years after giving the commission, the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde waited before it put any signs of impatience on record. Towards the close of October, 1823, Bernard gave a copy of the text of the oratorio, which was entitled “Der Sieg des Kreutzes” (“The Victory of the Cross”), to Beethoven and also one to Sonnleithner for the society. After waiting nearly three months, the directorate of the society at a meeting held on January 9, 1824, took action, the nature of which was notified to both Beethoven and Bernard. The latter was informed that as the society had left the choice of the text which he was to compose to Beethoven, it could not say whether or not the society would make use of the poem which he had sent until Beethoven had set it to music, and the censor had given it his sanction. He was also asked to coöperate with the society in stimulating Beethoven to finish the work “so long expected by the musical world.” Beethoven was told that the choice of a book for the oratorio which the society had commissioned him to write four years before had been left to him; that it had been informed that Bernard had undertaken to write it; that its inquiries as to when the music would be completed had always been answered by the statement that the poem had not been received. Not presuming to ask a composer of his eminence to outline the plan of a musical composition before he had become familiar with the work as a whole and had satisfied himself touching its plan and execution, the society, therefore, had thitherto always directed its inquiries to Bernard, who had delivered the book in October. In view of the fact that the society could not use the text until it had been set and he