Your obedient
LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN.
[Footnote 1: The correspondence with Varenna, consisting of fourteen letters and four notes, was purchased some years ago by a collector of autographs in Leipzig, and sold again by public auction, probably to different persons. It would be like pursuing leaves scattered by the wind to try to recover these letters. Those here given have for the most part appeared in newspapers; I cannot, therefore, be responsible for the text, farther than their publication goes, which, however, has evidently been conducted by a clever hand. The date of the first letter is to be gleaned from the second, and we also learn from them that The Ruins of Athens and King Stephen (or at all events the Overture) were already finished in January, 1812.]
[Footnote 2: This dilettante was Mdlle. Marie Koschak, subsequently the wife of Dr. Pachler, an advocate in Gratz, from whom two letters are given by Schindler of the dates of August 15th, 1825, and November 5th, 1826, in which she invites Beethoven to visit her in Gratz. Schindler considers as applicable to this lady the words of a note in Beethoven's writing of which he has given a fac-simile in his Biography, I. 95; the date 1817 or 1818. They are as follows:--"Love alone, yes! love alone can make your life happier. O God! grant that I may at last find her who can strengthen me in virtue, whom I can legitimately call my own. On July 27th, when she drove past me in Baden, she seemed to gaze at me." This lady also plays a friendly part in Franz Schubert's Life. See her Biography by Dr. Kreissle.]
81.
TO ZMESKALL.
Feb. 2, 1812.
By no means extraordinary, but very ordinary mender of pens! whose talent has failed on this occasion (for those I send require to be fresh mended), when do you intend at last to cast off your fetters?--when? You never for a moment think of me; accursed to me is life amid this Austrian barbarism. I shall go now chiefly to the "Swan," as in other taverns I cannot defend myself against intrusion. Farewell! that is, fare as well as I wish you to do without
Your friend,
BEETHOVEN.
Most wonderful of men! We beg that your servant will engage a person to fit up my apartment; as he is acquainted with the lodgings, he can fix the proper price at once. Do this soon, you Carnival scamp!!!!!!!
The enclosed note is at least a week old.