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Rh whom can I address that name now? Only to the silent pictures of her which my fancy paints." Fortunately he found a second mother in Mrs. Breuning, in whose house at Bonn he soon came to be regarded as one of the children. He spent the greater part of every day with the Breuning family, who were, as Schindler says, his guardian angels, and his friendship with whom was never interrupted for a moment during his whole life.

Soon after his arrival in Vienna Beethoven was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of the Prince and Princess Lichnowsky, who seem at once to have taken the young musician to their hearts, and who treated him almost like an adopted son. The Prince gave him an allowance of 600 florins, while the Princess did her best to spoil him—finding everything that the young man did or left undone, right, clever, original, and amiable. In later years Beethoven, when speaking of these good friends, said: "They would have brought me up with grandmotherly fondness, which was carried to such a length that very often the Princess was on the point of having a glass shade made to put over me so that no unworthy person might touch or breathe upon me." The Lichnowskys do not appear to have been alone in this treatment of the young composer, for we are told that his eccentricities met with indulgence and even admiration from high and low, and that there was a time when the name Beethoven had become a general password to which everybody gave way.

But Beethoven's friends had much to suffer from his suspicious disposition. When the Ninth symphony was produced, in 1824, it was given with great success, but the receipts were painfully meagre. Beethoven, as usual, accused his friends of defrauding him. Six months later he saw his error and begged Schindler and Duport to forgive him. He was extremely suspicious, and at times would not trust his best friends. But when convinced of his wrong, he would try to make peace in so hearty a manner that they would forgive