Please be so kind as to give this to the copyist to-morrow--it concerns the symphony as you see--in case he is not through with the quartet to-morrow, take it away and deliver it at the Industriecomptoir.... You may say to my brother that I shall certainly not write to him again. I know the cause, it is this, because he has lent me money and spent some on my account he is already concerned, I know my brothers, since I cannot yet pay it back to him, and the other probably who is filled with the spirit of revenge against me and him too--it were best if I were to collect the whole 1500 florins (from the Industriecomptoir) and pay him with it, then the matter will be at an end--heaven forefend that I should be obliged to receive benefactions from my brothers.[55] Beethoven. Of all the known letters of Beethoven, perhaps no one is so much to be regretted as this, written near the end of 1807, just when the contracts with the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir, and Simrock--he had received nothing as yet on the Clementi contract--made his pecuniary resources abundant, doubtless increased by a handsome honorarium out of the receipts of the Liebhaber Concerts. True, the letter was intended for Gleichenstein’s eye alone; still it is sad to know that even in a moment of spleen or anger and in the privacy of intimate friendship, the great master could so far forget his own dignity, and write thus abusively of his brother Johann, whose claim was just and whose future career was dependent upon its payment at this time. The case, in few words, was this:--Eleonore Ordley, sole heir of her sister, Theresia Tiller, was, in the autumn of 1807, seeking a purchaser for the house and “registered apothecary shop” which, until 1872, still existed directly between the market-place and the bridge at Linz on the Danube, and was willing to dispose of them on such terms of payment, as to render it possible even for Johann van Beethoven with his slender means to become their owner. “I know my brothers,” writes Beethoven. His brothers also knew him; and Johann had every reason to fear that if he did not secure his debt now when his brother’s means were abundant, he might at the crisis of his negotiation find himself penniless. His demand was too just to be resisted and Gleichenstein evidently drew the money from the Kunst- und Industrie-Comptoir and paid it; for on the 13th of March, 1808, the contract of sale was signed at Vienna. By the terms of the contract which fixed the price at 25,000 florins, the vendee agreed to assume incumbrances on the property amounting to 12,600 florins, pay 10,400 florins in cash and 5% interest on 2,000 florins to the vendor during her life, and to be in Linz and take possession of the property on or before March 20, i. e., within a week after the signing of the contract.