The other day I happened to hum the theme of the Andante from his Quartet in C Minor. He seemed rather to like my doing so, for when it came to the place...he accompanied my humming with gentle movements of his hand, as if beating time to it. At last he smilingly said : "I am not at all ashamed to own that it gives me the keenest pleasure if a song, an adagio, or anything of mine, has turned out particularly good. How must those gods : Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, have felt, whose daily bread it was to write things like the St. Matthew Passion, Don Giovanni, Fidelio, Ninth Symphony! What I cannot understand is how people like myself can be vain. As much as we men, who walk upright, are above the creeping things of the earth, so these gods are above us. If it were not so ludicrous it would be loathsome to me to hear colleagues of mine praise me to my face in such an exaggerated manner."