We went a long way through the suburbs one bright afternoon to a little
cemetery about a mile from the city to find the grave of Beethoven. On
ringing at the gate a girl admitted us into the grounds, in which are
many monuments of noble families who have vaults there. I passed up the
narrow walk, reading the inscriptions, till I came to the tomb of Franz
Clement, a young composer who died two or three years ago. On turning
again my eye fell instantly on the word "Beethoven" in golden letters on
a tombstone of gray marble. A simple gilded lyre decorated the pedestal,
above which was a serpent encircling a butterfly--the emblem of
resurrection. Here, then, moldered the remains of that restless spirit
who seemed to have strayed to earth from another clime, from such a
height did he draw his glorious conceptions.
The perfection he sought for here in vain he has now attained in a
world where the soul is freed from the bars which bind it in this. There
were no flowers planted around the tomb by those who revered his genius;
only one wreath, withered and dead, lay among the grass, as if left long
ago by some solitary pilgrim, and a few wild buttercups hung with their
bright blossoms over the slab. It might have been wrong, but I could not
resist the temptation to steal one or two while the old gravedigger was
busy preparing a new tenement.
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