force of his character that he should have the friendship of such
people. He had done nothing as yet to lead people to believe that he
would ever become a great composer. As has been stated, however, he was
a pianist of great originality, with a remarkable talent for
improvising, which, no doubt, had much to do in making him a welcome
guest wherever he went.

Madame von Breuning, with her woman's tact, and the fine intuitive
perceptions that were characteristic of her, looked after his
intellectual development, and was helpful to him in various ways,
encouraging him as well in his musical studies. But Beethoven was by no
means an easy person to get along with, as she soon found out. He was
fiery and headstrong, disliking all restraint, being especially
impatient of anything that savored of patronage. She seems to have known
that in Beethoven she had before her that rarest product of humanity, a
man of genius, and had infinite patience with him. His dislike for
teaching was pronounced, then, as in after years, and she was often at
her wits' end to get him to keep his engagements in this respect. She,
in short, did for Beethoven what Madame Boehme did for Goethe many years
before, when the poet left his native Frankfort and came to Leipsic. He
was but sixteen, and found in her a friend, counsellor, almost a mother,
who not only instructed him about dress and deportment, which soon
enabled him to obliterate his provincialism, but showed a motherly
solicitude for him, which must have been of great help to him in many
ways.

Madame von Breuning interested Beethoven in the classics, as well as in
contemporary philosophical literature. Lessing, Goethe and Schiller
became favorite authors with him. A much-thumbed translation of
Shakespeare was a valued part of his small library in after years. He