Page:Rolland - Beethoven, tr. Hull, 1927.pdf/69

 with your moral development, with an affection more than paternal, begs you from the bottom of his heart to follow the only true path of the good and the just.

Your faithful foster-father.

After having cherished all kinds of dreams for the future of this nephew, who was not lacking in intelligence and whom he wished to take up a University career, Beethoven had to consent to make a merchant of him. But Carl frequented gambling dens and contracted debts. By a sad phenomenon, more frequent than one believes, the moral grandeur of his uncle, instead of doing him good, made him worse. It exasperated him, impelling him to revolt, as he said in those terrible words where his miserable soul appears so plainly, "I have become worse because my uncle wished me to do better." He reached such a state that in the summer of 1826 he shot himself in the head with a pistol. He did not die from it, but it was Beethoven who just missed dying. He never recovered from this terrible fright. Carl recovered; he lived to the end to cause suffering to his uncle,