Page:Rolland - Beethoven, tr. Hull, 1927.pdf/79

 He told his nephew to go for a doctor. The wretch forgot his commission and only remembered two days after. The doctor came too late and treated Beethoven unskilfully. For three months his iron constitution fought against the illness. On January 3rd, 1827, he made his well-loved nephew his chief executor. He thought of his dear friends on the Rhine; he wrote again to Wegeler: "How I would like to talk with you! But I am too weak. I can do no more than embrace you in my heart, you and your Lorchen." Poverty would have made his last moments more gloomy, had it not been for the generosity of some English friends. He had become very gentle and very patient. On his death-bed on February 17th, 1827, after three operations and awaiting a fourth, he wrote with perfect calmness, "I am patient and I think that all misfortune brings some blessing with it." This boon was deliverance—"the end of the comedy," as he said when dying. We night say rather the end of the tragedy. . He died in the climax of a violent storm, a tempest of snow, heavily punctuated with terrible thunder