might to rid her son of the guardianship of his uncle. Karl was
sent to various educational institutions and to these Beethoven
sent many letters containing advice and instructions. The nephew
grew to be more and more a care, not wholly without fault of the
master. His passionate nature led to many quarrels between the
two, all of which were followed by periods of extravagant
fondness. Karl neglected his studies, led a frivolous life, was
fond of billiards and the coffee-houses which were then generally
popular, and finally, in the summer of 1826, made an attempt at
suicide in the Helenental near Baden, which caused his social
ostracism. When he was found he cried out: "I went to the bad
because my uncle wanted to better me."

Beethoven succeeded in persuading Baron von Stutterheim, commander
of an infantry regiment at Iglau, to accept him as an aspirant for
military office. In later life he became a respected official and
man. So Beethoven himself was vouchsafed only an ill regulated
education. His dissolute father treated him now harshly, now
gently. His mother, who died early, was a silent sufferer, had
thoroughly understood her son, and to her his love was devotion
itself. He labored unwearyingly at his own intellectual and moral
advancement until his death.

It seems difficult to reconcile his almost extravagant estimate of
the greatest possible liberty in the development of man with his
demands for strict constraint to which he frequently gives
expression; but he had recognized that it is necessary to grow
out of restraint into liberty. His model as a sensitive and
sympathetic educator was his motherly friend, the wife of Court
Councillor von Breuning in Bonn, of whom he once said: "She knew