sh fate, and I shall probably
wish him to come at a later date. But even then I shall be content, for
will he not release me from endless suffering? Come when you please, I
shall meet you bravely."

(From the Heiligenstadt Will.)

236. "Apollo and the muses will not yet permit me to be delivered
over to the grim skeleton, for I owe them so much, and I must, on any
departure for the Elysian Fields, leave behind me all that the spirit
has inspired and commanded to be finished."

(September 17, 1824, to Schott, music publisher in Mayence.)

237. "Had I not read somewhere that it is not pending man to part
voluntarily from his life so long as there is a good deed which he can
perform, I should long since have been no more, and by my own hand. O,
how beautiful life is, but in my case it is poisoned."

(May 2, 1810, to his friend Wegeler, to whom he is lamenting over "the
demon that has set up his habitat in my ears.")

238. "I must abandon wholly the fond hope, which I brought hither, to be
cured at least in a degree. As the fallen autumn leaves have withered,
so are now my hopes blighted. I depart in almost the same condition
in which I came; even the lofty courage which often animated me in the
beautiful days of summer has disappeared."

(From the Will. Beethoven had tried the cure at Heiligenstadt.)

239. "All week long I had to suffer and endure like a saint. Away with
this rabble! What a reproach to our civilization that we need what we
despise and must always know it near!"

(In 1825, complaining of the misery caused by his domestics.)

240. "The best thing to do not to think of your malady is to keep
occupied."

(Diary, 1812-18.)

241. "It is no comfort for men of the better sort to say to them that
others also suffer; but, alas! comparisons must always be made, though
they only teach that we all suffer, that is err, only in different
ways."

(In 1816, to Countess Erdody, on the death of her son.)

242. "The portraits of Handel, Bach, Gluck, Mozart and Haydn in my
room,--they may help me to make claim on toleration."

(Diary, 1815-16.)

243. "God, who knows my innermost soul, and knows how sacredly I have
fulfilled all the duties but upon me as man by humanity, God and nature
will surely some day relieve me from these afflictions."

(July 18, 1821, to Archduke Rudolph, from Unterubling.)

244. "Friendship and similar