It is certainly not permissible – to be on such friendly terms as I thought I was with you, and then to live beside one another as such bitter enemies, without seeing one another ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! Tout à vous, you wrote. Oh, what a windbag you are, said I – No, no, it is too bad – I should be only too glad to thank you nine thousand times for your efforts on my behalf and to rail at you twenty thousand times for having gone off like that, and for having come back like that -- So all is illusion, friendship, kingdom, empire, all is just a mist which a breath of wind can disperse and shape again in a different way ! ! Perhaps I shall go to Teplitz, but it is not certain. If I did, I might give the natives of Prague an opportunity of hearing something. What do you think, that is, assuming that you still entertain any opinion of me? -- Since the Lobkowitz affair has been settled too – well, there is now Finis, although a small fi or pfui is the result – No doubt Baron Pasqualati will soon visit you again. He too has had a lot of worry in connexion with my affairs – Yes, indeed, it is easy to say the right thing, but it is difficult to make others do it – In what way can I serve you with my art? Tell me, do you want a musical setting of the soliloquy of a refugee king or a song about the perjury of a usurper – or about two friends living in adjacent houses who yet never see one another? – In the hope soon to have some news of you, since you are now so far away from me and it is so much easier for us to keep in close touch than if we lived beside one another, I remain
Your ever devoted and respectful friend
Ludwig van Beethoven