Beethoven was in no sense a hero to his servants. In their eyes he was
not the great artist, whose achievement was to go ringing down the ages;
he was simply a crank or madman, who did not know his own mind half the
time, from whom abuse was as likely to be predicated as gratuities, who
could be ridiculed, neglected, circumvented with impunity. When the
dereliction became glaring enough to arrest his attention, he would
deliver himself of a volley of abuse which sometimes had to be made good
by presents of money. At other times, he desired nothing so much as to
be left alone.
That he found the world a more difficult problem than ever in these
later years, goes without saying. "Have you been patient with every one
to-day?" he asks himself in one of the note-books of this period,
indicating the dawn of a perception that fate is too much for him, that
it can be defied no longer, but rather must be propitiated. Had he
answered his question, it would no doubt have been in the negative; but
this attitude, so new to him, is significant.
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