memorandum in a Conversation Book which discloses that Beethoven received specific reports about his conduct, and noted them for reference: “One night in the Prater.--2 nights did not sleep at home.” Beethoven stinted him the matter of pocket-money, and the scores of reckonings in the Conversation Books show how close was the watch kept upon every kreutzer placed in his hands. So he had recourse to borrowing and no doubt, though the fact does not appear plainly in the books, he went into debt at the places which he frequented for pleasure. When he shot himself he had paid his lodging bill for the month but owed his tutor. A matter which gave Beethoven great concern was the discovery that he had disposed of some of the composer’s books at an antiquary’s. This was theft, a penal offence, and Beethoven seems to have been in great trepidation lest the fact, and something more dreadful still which he did not know, be discovered by the magistrate charged with an examination into the case. Under the Austrian code an attempt at suicide seems to have been an offence against the Church and guilty persons were remanded in the care of priests who imparted religious instruction until a profession of conversion could be recorded. In the case of Karl, this medicine for the mind and soul was administered by a Redemptorist, and, the Liguorian penances being proverbially strict, Holz inspired the hope in Beethoven that Karl’s secret would be discovered by the priest. “These Liguorians are like leeches,” is one of his remarks to the composer while Karl is lying at the hospital. It is pathetic to note that Beethoven himself, willing as he was to charge his nephew with prevarication, extravagance, deception and frivolity, yet sought an explanation for the act outside of these delinquencies. In his hand appears a note in a Conversation Book: “Mental aberration and insanity; the heat, too--afflicted with headaches since childhood.” [Sidenote: PLANNING A MILITARY LIFE FOR KARL]