[164] This alludes to a violent quarrel which arose between the composer and his friend, about some lodgings which the latter had taken for him.
[165] Ries then lived at a tailor's, who had beautiful daughters.
[166] My lot in this particular was that of his pupil Ries. The dedication was made by letter only; but are not such letters of greater value?
[167] This alludes to what will appear by and by in Ries's sketches.
[168] Beethoven was here mistaken. It was not a song of his composition which he no longer possessed, but merely new words put to Matthisson's Ode. I did the same thing with an early song of Beethoven's—"Who is a free man?" (Wer ist ein freier Mann?) Beethoven wished to have words for the theme of those Variations with which the grand Sonata, Op. 26, dedicated to Prince Lichnowsky, commences. My attempt did not however satisfy me: thus he never saw it.
[169] Joseph Simrock, music publisher, the head of the present house.
[170] "Dessiné par Letronne, et gravé par Hoefel, 1814. For my friend Wegeler. Vienna, March 27, 1815. Ludw. van Beethoven." Our mutual friend, Director Eichhoff, brought it away for me after the congress.
[171] Beethoven was educating the son of his brother Caspar, who had died the preceding year.
[172] Beethoven was then living at Bonn, in the Wenzel Street.
[173] The reader may judge hereby what to think of Beethoven's contempt of such distinctions.