I now beg of you, dear Ries, to go to my brother, the apothecary, as soon as you receive this letter, and say to him that I mean to leave Baden in the course of a few days, and that he is to engage the lodging in Doebling as soon as you have given him this message.  I had nearly left this to-day; I detest being here—­I am sick of it.  For Heaven’s sake urge him to close the bargain at once, for I want to take possession immediately.  Neither show nor speak to any one of what is written in the previous page of this letter.  I wish to prove to him in every respect that I am not so meanly disposed as he is.  Indeed I have written to him, although my resolve as to the dissolution of our friendship remains firm and unchangeable.

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.”]