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At his death some four *#tlzqm4 hundred of these books were inherited by his heir, Stephan von Bruening, who gave them to Anton Schindler, Beethoven's devoted servant, secretary, pupil, and companion for the last ten years of his life. Schindler used them for his copious adulatory biography, finally published in 1860. Having drawn on them for his own purposes, in 1846 Schindler sold them to the Royal Prussian Library in Berlin, recalling that Beethoven had wished them to be available to everybody. What he delivered to the library was not 400 conversation books but only 126. When the librarian asked for the missing 264, Schindler explained that he had de- stroyed some because they contained nothing significant, and others be- cause they were politically embarrassing with "licentious assaults against persons in highest places." It is more likely that Schindler destroyed them to conceal damaging facts about his idol's private life or uncomplimentary remarks about himself. For obvious reasons, this strangely intimate record covering mostly the last nine years of Beethoven's life is emphatically one-sided. Beethoven remained air max sandals 95 a vivacious talker and loved to have his say. In these conversation books we read mainly the cheap nike air max 95 shoes words of his interlocutors or their answers to his questions. When he air max store 95 wrote in the books it was to put down a reminder, or when he feared being overheard or addressed another deaf person, or to record his frequent sense of outrage. But through them we can follow everyday conversations, the fees offered for composing, his concert arrangements, complaints of the price or quality of food or lodging, his reading tastes, the state of his opinions or his digestion, comments from his wayward nephew, menus from his housekeeper, and endless other trivia. Visitors were appalled by Beethoven's personal disarray and slovenly household. He had hardly moved into one apartment before he vacated for another. His biographer, Thayer, could identify more than sixty residential addresses for him after 1800. When Carl Maria von Weber visited him in 1822 he noted music, money, and articles of clothing lying on the fioor, wash piled on a dirty unmade bed, thick dust on the grand piano, and a chipped coffee set on the table. Rossini, whose Barber of Seville Beethoven much admired, was invited air max shoes 95 cheap nike for a visit in 1822, as he reported to Wagner. "Oh! The visit was short. That is easily understood because one side of the conversa- tion had to be carried on in writing. I expressed to him all my admiration for his genius, all my gratitude for having given me the opportunity to express it. He answered with a deep sigh and the single word: 60h! un