There is an end of the troublesome business. So I name it, because I only wish it could be otherwise in the world. There ought to be an artistic _depôt_ where the artist need only hand in his art-work in order to receive what he asks for. As things are, one must be half a business man, and how can one understand,--good heavens!--that's what I really call _troublesome_. As for the Leipzig O (?) let them just go on talking; _they_ will never by their chatter confer immortality on any one, neither can they take it away from any one for whom Apollo has destined it. Now, may heaven have _you and yours_ in its keeping. For some time I have not been well; and so it is now somewhat difficult for me to write notes, still more so alphabet letters. I hope that we shall often have opportunity to assure ourselves that you are a great friend to me, and that I am Your devoted brother and friend, L. V. BEETHOVEN. VII. Letter from Wegeler and Eleonore von Breuning to Beethoven. _Coblentz_, 28 _December_, 1825. My dear old Louis. I cannot allow one of Ries' ten children to leave Vienna without recalling him to your remembrance. If during the twenty-eight years since I left Vienna, you have not received a long letter from me every two months, you must put it down to your own silence after the first letters which I sent you. It should not be so and especially now that we other old people live so entirely in the past and derive our chief pleasure in recollections of our youth. For me at least, my acquaintance and my firm friendship to you, thanks to your good mother whom God now blesses, is a guiding star in my life, towards which I turn with pleasure.... I raise my eyes to you as to a hero, and I am proud to be able to say: 'I have had some influence on his development; he confided in me his ambitions and his dreams; and when later he was so often misunderstood, I knew quite well what he wanted.' God be praised that I have been able to speak of you with my wife, and now with my children! My mother-in-law's house was more your home than your own home, especially after the death of your good mother. Tell us still once more, 'I think of you both in joy and in sorrow.' A man, even when he has risen as high as you, is only happy once in his life: when he is young. Your thoughts should hark back happily many times to the stones of Bonn, Godesburg, Pépinière, etc. Now I want to speak of myself, of ourselves, to give you an example of how you ought to reply to me.