sudden fit of pique, and there
had been no attempt at reconciliation. But now, wasted by disease, and
fast sinking into his grave, there was no room in his heart for aught
but joy at the knowledge that one whom he had formerly liked was so
near him. 'Oh,' he cried, raising himself in bed when he heard the
news--'oh, if he would but call to see me!' No one seems to have
carried the message from the dying man, but it was answered. A few
days later Hummel came, and the old friends were at once in each
other's arms. Hummel, struck by the terrible signs of suffering in
Beethoven's face, broke into bitter weeping. Beethoven tried to calm
him, and, pulling from beneath his pillow a sketch of Haydn's
birthplace which he had that morning received, he cried, 'Look, my
dear Hummel, here is Haydn's birthplace! So great a man born in so
mean a cottage!'

Beethoven died on March 26, 1827, having recently completed his
fifty-sixth year. Two days before his death he received the last
Sacraments of the Church. 'As the evening closed in, at a quarter to
six, there came a sudden storm of hail and snow, covering the ground
and roofs of the Schwarzspanierplatz, and followed by a flash of
lightning and an instant clap of thunder. So great was the crash as to
rouse even the dying man. He opened his eyes, clenched his fist, and
shook it in the air above him. This lasted a few seconds, while the
hail rushed down outside, and then the hand fell, and the great
composer was no more.'[21]

On March 29, at three o'clock in the afternoon, Beethoven was laid to
rest in the Waehringer Cemetery, Vienna. The funeral was a very grand
one. Twenty thousand people followed him to his grave, and soldiers
were needed to force a way for the coffin through the densely packed
mass awaiting its arrival at the cemetery gates. Amongst the mourners
was Schubert, the composer, who had visited him on his death-bed, and
who acted as one of the torch-bearers. A choir of men singers and
trombones performed and sang several of the master's compositions, as
the great procession wended its way to the graveside, and Hummel laid
three wreaths of laurel upon the coffin before it was lowered to its
resting-place.

FOOTNOTES:

[16] Mozart had died in December of the previous year.

[17] Schindler, 'Life of Beethoven.'

[18] Moscheles, in Schindler's 'Life of Beethoven.'

[19] Sir G. Grove, 'Dictionary of Music and Musicians.'

[20] One of these sketch-books, filled wi