At a later period, when Beethoven has apparently upbraided the young man for his unwillingness to return to Vienna, Karl retorts: If you want to go, good; if not, good again. But I beg of you once more not to torment me as you are doing; you might regret it, for I can endure much, but not too much. You treated your brother in the same way to-day without cause. You must remember that other people are also human beings.--These everlastingly unjust reproaches!--Why do you make such a disturbance? Will you let me go out a bit to-day? I need recreation. I’ll come again later.--I only want to go to my room.--I am not going out, I want only to be alone for a little while.--Will you not let me go to my room? [Sidenote: A RETURN TO VIENNA PRECIPITATED] Karl was a young man of nearly twenty years; thriftless, no doubt; indolent, no doubt; fond of his ease and addicted to idle pleasures, no doubt--but still a man; and no matter how much he ought to have been willing to sacrifice himself to make his uncle happy, it is a question if there was any way in the world to that sure and permanent result. He was not wise enough, nor self-sacrificing enough, to do that which not a single one of the composer’s maturer friends, not even Stephan von Breuning, had been able to do. Once in the Books he shows a disposition to resort to the wheedling tactics which had been frequently successful in earlier years, and urges as a reason for tarrying longer in Gneixendorf that it will make possible their longer companionship. He is pleading for a week’s longer stay: Breuning had said that he should not present himself to the Fieldmarshal until no evidences of the recent “incident” were longer visible; in a week more the scar would not be noticeable, nor would a stay be necessary had he provided himself with pomade; then he remarks: “The longer we are here the longer we shall be together; for when we are in Vienna I shall, of course, have to go away soon.” It was after this speech that he made the remark already referred to about the cheapness of fire-wood. Karl had plainly grown more than content with his life in Gneixendorf and there is evidence to show that Beethoven had begun to fear that he was wavering in his determination to enter the army. Some drastic measure or occurrence was necessary to change the native irresolution of Beethoven’s mind. Schindler, in his desire to paint all the Beethovens, with the exception of the composer, with the blackest pigments on his imaginative palette, does not scruple to accuse Karl of undue intimacy with his aunt and offers this as a reason for the departure. To this no reference can be found in the pages of the Conversation Books, unless it be a remark which preceded Karl’s outburst, last recorded. Here he tells his uncle that all his “talk about intrigues needs no refutation.” The reference is vague and it is extremely unlikely that the intrigues meant were those involved in