I cannot sufficiently lament that your other music arrived too late to make use of it. It was indeed utterly impossible to do so. I herewith send you, my dear friend, a check for 40 Louis d'or on Heppenmayer & Co. in Vienna, according to our agreement, and beg you will acknowledge the receipt, that I may settle everything relating to Aix-la-Chapelle.
I am glad that you have not accepted any engagement in England. If you choose to reside there, you must previously take measures to ensure your finding your account in it. From the Theatre alone Rossini got £2500. If the English wish to do anything at all remarkable for you, they must combine, so that it may be well worth your while to go there. You are sure to receive enough of applause, and marks of homage, but you have had plenty of these during your whole life. May all happiness attend you. Dear Beethoven, yours ever,
As in this heat you may perhaps wish to bathe, I send you two more florins. You must be careful to take a written receipt from those to whom you pay money; for that errors do occur is proved by the blue cloth, and the three florins for the looking-glass. You are a thorough Viennese, and although I do not expect you to become a W.W. (depreciated Vienna currency), still it is no disgrace at your age to give an exact account of all that you receive, as no one is considered to be of age till five and twenty, and even if you had property of your own, you would be obliged to account for it to your guardian at your present years. Let us not refer to the past; it would be easy to do so, but only cause me pain; at last it would come to this, "You are indeed a first-rate guardian," &c. If you had any depth of feeling you would have acted very differently in most things.
Now as to my domestic rabble; yesterday the kitchenmaid was off again and got a fresh place; the cause is difficult to discover from my old witch, who is now once more all smiles, and no longer persists in declaring that she has incurred any _loss_ from the weekly bills; what do you think of that?
[The last page of this letter is an illegible fragment.]
I have just got your letter this evening, and could not help laughing at it. It was not right in the people at Mayence to have acted thus, but since the thing has occurred, it does not signify. Our epoch requires strong minds to scourge those frivolous, contemptible, malicious beings, repulsive as it is to my feelings to cause pain to any man. Besides, I intended a mere jest, and it was far from my intention to let such a thing be printed.[1]