We send you our most friendly greetings and expect the same from you even without any tangible proofs – That Goethe is here I have already told you. I spend some time with him every day. He has promised to write something for me. If only I do not have the same experience with him as others have with me ! ! ! -- One feels a distaste for several things, yet one makes a promise and has every intention of fulfilling it; and in the end nothing comes of it – Send me by ‘letter post’ my six songs, one of which is Goethe’s ‘Kennst du das Land . . . . ‘ – Have an offprint made on the thinnest and finest paper as quickly, as speedily, in the quickest way, with the greatest expedition and so quickly that one cannot express it in words, and send it to me here on the wings of thought; and be sure to have it made on the thinnest and finest paper, for I am a poor Austrian musical bungler – povero musico! (and yet not in the manner – )
Moreover I told you this and that, but I know nothing – punctum.
Did you receive the Mass some time ago?. I won’t say: ages ago.. Are we soon no longer to detect in various muddled and inaccurate editions the muddleheadedness of an infatuated publisher who desires to increase his stock? -- -- -- We are most particularly attached to you and are almost writing this to you in water; and what the public wants may soon be realized, i.e. it will have a watery composer –
Your friend
Beethoven