Your friend,
BEETHOVEN.

38.
TO HERR RIES.

Berlin, July 24, 1804.

... You were no doubt not a little surprised about the affair with Breuning; believe me, my dear friend, that the ebullition on my part was only an outbreak caused by many previous scenes of a disagreeable nature. I have the gift of being able to conceal and to repress my susceptibility on many occasions; but if attacked at a time when I chance to be peculiarly irritable, I burst forth more violently than any one. Breuning certainly possesses many admirable qualities, but he thinks himself quite faultless; whereas the very defects that he discovers in others are those which he possesses himself to the highest degree. From my childhood I have always despised his petty mind. My powers of discrimination enabled me to foresee the result with Breuning, for our modes of thinking, acting, and feeling are entirely opposite; and yet I believed that these difficulties might be overcome, but experience has disproved this. So now I want no more of his friendship! I have only found two friends in the world with whom I never had a misunderstanding; but what men these were! One is dead, the other still lives. Although for nearly six years past we have seen nothing of each other, yet I know that I still hold the first place in his heart, as he does in mine [see No. 12]. The true basis of friendship is to be found in sympathy of heart and soul. I only wish you could have read the letter I wrote to Breuning, and his to me. No! never can he be restored to his former place in my heart. The man who could attribute to his friend so base a mode of thinking, and could himself have recourse to so base a mode of acting towards him, is no longer worthy of my friendship.

Do not forget the affair of my apartments. Farewell! Do not be too much addicted to tailoring,[1] remember me to the fairest of the fair, and send me half a dozen needles.

I never could have believed that I could be so idle as I am here. If this be followed by a fit of industry, something worth while may be produced.

Vale! Your
BEETHOVEN.

[Footnote 1: Ries says, in Wegeler's Biographical Notices:--"Beethoven never visited me more frequently than when I lived in the house of a tailor, with three very handsome but thoroughly respectable daughters.">[

39.
TO MESSRS. ARTARIA & CO.[1]

Vienna, June 1, 1805.