Ludwig again frowned a little, but quickly smoothed his brow with his hand, as if wiping away all troubles and gloomy thoughts. “You are right,” said he. “I was a fool to entertain such bold fancies and daring hopes. And this, too, in my melancholy circumstances and wretched plight! It is not possible. I was mad, that I was.” With these last words such deep dejection manifested itself in his countenance that Wegeler suddenly felt the warmest sympathy for the young man.
“What is the matter? Why do you speak of wretchedness and melancholy, Ludwig?” he cordially said, as he threw his arm around his much younger friend and drew him affectionately toward him.
“Ah! you know not—no one knows—what it is that depresses and weighs me down,” answered Ludwig. “Poverty is such a heavy burden. It rests like a load upon the pinions of the soul. Oh, it is awful to feel here, here in one’s inmost soul, that one could accomplish the great and the beautiful, and yet not be able to do it because he lacks a few miserable gulden and kreuzers. It is hard, Wegeler.”
Tears stood in young Beethoven’s eyes, and his lips quivered in the effort to repress his emotions. Wegeler’s eyes rested with an expression of deep sympathy upon the dejected figure which he had seen only a short time before exulting in the joyousness of hope.
“Ludwig,” he said,—and his voice had an unusually tender tone,—“I pray you, open your heart to me, and do not conceal what troubles and oppresses you. I feel for you as for a true and sincere friend. Take me for your friend and then speak, for you know between true heart-friends there should be no restraint, no secrets.”
“Friend!” said Ludwig. “Would you actually be my true friend?”
“To the last hour of my life. I swear it,” said Wegeler, in such an honest manner that his sincerity could not be doubted.
Ludwig understood him and was comforted. With an exclamation of joy he embraced Wegeler and kissed him. “So we are friends, always friends,” he cried. “Oh, how I have longed for a soul that could and would understand me, and lo, at last I have found one. Now you shall learn, dear, good Wegeler, what has disturbed my soul and checked its flights. I am not happy, and the cause of my unhappiness, alas, is my father’s conduct. I have kept this melancholy secret deeply hidden in my breast, but here, where no one but the dear God and the little birds can hear, I will disclose it.”