As regards the songs I have already begun them and will deliver them in about a week to Fries--therefore please send me an answer soon, my dear sir. Next time please send me the words of the songs along with them as it is very necessary for me to have them in order to get the correct expression--they will be translated for me. September came and still no payment from Clementi and Co. for the works bought by them in April, 1807. Clementi was in Rome and thither, it would seem, Beethoven sent several letters asking for payment. Clementi now came to Vienna and sent a letter to his London partner, Collard, which, though dateless as to year and day, was, no doubt, the result of Beethoven’s importunities. In it he complains of having written five or six letters to them for money with which to meet Beethoven’s demands, the composer having “plagued” him with several letters--but in vain. At last a firm of Viennese bankers informs him that a credit for £400 has been sent him, but no letter. He concludes that of this sum £100 are meant for Beethoven and £300 for himself, and that they had received but half of Beethoven’s manuscripts. “A most shabby figure you have made me cut in this affair!--and that with one of the first composers of the day! You certainly might have found means in the course of two years and a half to have satisfied his demands. Don’t lose a moment and send me word ~what~ you have received from him, that I may settle with him.” Towards the end of the year Beethoven took ill, as he informs Breitkopf and Härtel in a letter which was dated December 4 (but from which the figure was stricken; the letter may have been delayed or Beethoven become doubtful, as usual, about the day of the month). In this he writes: “A fever which shook me up thoroughly, prevented me from sending these tardily found ~errata~ [in the two Trios] at once.” On January 2, 1810, he writes another letter which begins: “Scarcely recovered--my illness threw me back again for two weeks--is it a wonder--we have not even eatable bread,” concluding with: “I am too weak to-day to answer your kind letter more fully, but in a few days touching everything else in your letter.” Beethoven had now entered his fortieth year, a year which forms a marked and striking era in his life, but of which the most important event is veiled in all the obscurity with which the care and efforts of the parties concerned could envelop it. In the hope of a solution, at least ~probable~, of the mystery which it presents, many minutiæ of the years 1807-09 have been reserved to be presented consecutively, since only thus can their relations to and their bearings upon the problem before us be well understood. The next chapter must, therefore, be but an introduction to the history of the year 1810. [Sidenote: BEETHOVEN IN FINANCIAL STRAITS]