Beethoven learns that Karl goes to the theatre, has been seen in the company of lewd women, frequents dancing places, plays billiards and borrows money. Holz, who once suggests the advisability of assuming the co-guardianship, thinks it might be a good thing could he attach the young man to himself by becoming his often companion. He invites him to a beerhouse to learn his drinking habits and reports favorably upon them. He talks with Karl about the theatre and advises him to go less to the Josephstadt playhouse and oftener to the Burg, where classical pieces are played; and learning that Karl attends the former because it costs him nothing, ventures the statement that his uncle will allow him money for the theatre if he will but go to the better place. Beethoven’s views on the subject are expressed in a letter: “Let the theatre alone for the present.” After the wicked deed, Holz reminded Beethoven that Johann van Beethoven had said that Karl knew every strumpet in Vienna and that investigation had disclosed that he was right. Karl goes to dances; Beethoven is so solicitous as to their character that he expressed a desire to go to some of them with Holz so as to learn what they are like, and Holz dissuades him on the ground that he would be stared at and it would cause public comment; but he offers to take him to a hall “of the reformed” in the Apollo Room, where he would be less observed. Beethoven fears that Karl’s passion for billiards will lead him astray, and Holz says he will sometime go with the lad to see how well he plays and thus learn whether or not he plays much.[160] Karl is now nearly 20 years old, but Beethoven does not, or will not, know that he is no longer to be disciplined as a child. He commands Schlemmer that he is not to be permitted to go out at night except on written permission signed by him. He exhausts Dr. Reisser’s patience with his frequent calls to learn of the young man’s habits and conduct. He takes upon himself the task of the ancient pedagogue and waits for him upon the steps of the Institute to accompany him home. His illness and melancholy, due to his solitary life in Baden, increase and he is haunted by premonitions of death. In a Conversation Book he once writes what seems to be the title of an imaginary composition “On the Death of Beethoven.” On June 9, 1825, he writes to Karl: “You know how I live here. To this is added the cold weather. This solitude weakens me still more, for my weakness really often borders on a swoon. O, do not pain me more! The man with the scythe will not give me much more time.” In the same summer: “God will set me free from them. _Libera me domine de illis etc._” and “God be with you and me. It will soon be all over with your faithful father.” His loneliness oppresses him more and more as fears for his nephew’s fate and recognition of his own impotency to avert it pursue him. “God has never deserted me. Somebody will be found who will close my eyes,” he writes on September 14.