After Karl’s attempt to end his ill-spent life, with its crushing effect upon the composer, the friends, Holz in particular, made many efforts to divert Beethoven’s mind from his disappointment and grief. They accompanied him on brief excursions into the country which he loved so passionately and which had been closed to him, for the customary happy season, by his nephew’s act. Again did his brother offer him a haven at Gneixendorf in August, only to receive the curt answer: “I will not come. Your brother??????!!!! Ludwig.” His nephew was lying in the hospital. He could not leave him then nor did he go until it had become necessary to find an asylum for Karl as well as a resting-place for himself. His brother came to the city late in September; it was necessary that Karl should remain out of Vienna until he could join a regiment of soldiery, and so Beethoven accepted Johann’s renewed invitation to make a sojourn at Gneixendorf. Meanwhile he was far from idle. He had begun a new quartet, in F major, and Schlesinger, _père_, who had come from Berlin, negotiated with him for its publication. He had the new finale for the B-flat Quartet on his mind and, as will appear later, several other works occupied him. With Schlesinger he talked about the Complete Edition and some military marches which the King of Prussia was to pay for, as they were to be written for the Royal Band. The chief obstacle to Beethoven’s acceptance of his brother’s repeated invitations to visit him at Gneixendorf came from the presence there of the brother’s wife. Her scandalous conduct had begotten an intense hatred in Beethoven’s mind. Urged on by his brother, Johann had once planned to put her away, but there was an obstacle in the shape of a marriage contract, which gave her half of his property, and though she was willing to surrender the contract at one time, she was not content to be turned out upon the world with neither character nor means of subsistence. Besides, Johann was loath to take the drastic methods which alone were open to him. He was inclined, much to the indignation of his brother, to be complaisant; he needed a housekeeper and for that she would serve. “I go my way and let her go hers,” he said, and he told his brother when trying to persuade him to spend his summers, perhaps eventually all his time, at Gneixendorf, that he need pay no heed whatever to his sister-in-law. Much of the ill-feeling was due to the fact that Beethoven wanted to insure his brother’s fortune for Karl. The nephew did eventually become his sole heir and inherited 42,000 florins from him. [Sidenote: BEETHOVEN AT GNEIXENDORF]