ng out to him how small was the difference, really, between
the greatest earthly joy and the greatest earthly sorrow: these were
not like black and white, but merely different shades of gray, as on
moonlit things a long way off! and Time, what a reconciler it
was--like distance! and Death, what a perfect resolution of all
possible discords, and how certain! and our own little life, how
short, and without importance! what matters whether it's to-day,
this small individual flutter of ours; or was a hundred years ago;
or will be a hundred years hence! it has or had to be got
through--and it's better past than to come.

[Illustration: "THE MOONLIGHT SONATA"]

"It all leads to the same divine issue, my poor friend," said Beethoven;
"why, just see here--I'm stone-deaf, and can't hear a note of what I'm
singing to you! But it is not about _that_ I weep, when I am weeping. It
was terrible when it first came on, my deafness, and I could no longer
hear the shepherd's pipe or the song of the lark; but it's well worth
going deaf, to hear all that _I_ do. I have to write everything down,
and read it to myself; and my tears fall on the ruled paper, and blister
the lines, and make the notes run into each other; and when I try to
blot it all out, there's that still left on the page, which, turned into
sound by good father Louis the Dominican, will tell you, if you can only
hear it aright, what is not to be told in any human speech; not even
that of Plato, or Marcus Aurelius, or Erasmus, or Shakespeare; not even
that of Christ himself, who speaks through me from His unknown grave,
because I am deaf and cannot hear the distracting words of men--poor,
paltry words at their best, which mean so many things at once that they
mean just nothing at all. It's a Tower of Babel. Just stop your ears and
listen with your heart and you will hear all that you can see when you
shut your eyes or have lost them--and those are the only realities, mein
armer Barty!"

Then the good Mozart would say:

"Lieber Barty--I'm so stupid about earthly things that I could never
even say Boh to a goose, so I can't give you any good advice; all my
heart overflowed into my brain when I was quite a little boy and
made music for grown-up people to hear; from the day of my birth to
my fifth birthday I had gone on remembering everything, but learning
nothing new--remembering all that music!

"And I went on remembering more and more till I was thirty-five; and
even the