Beethoven arrived in Teplitz about August 1, possibly a day or two earlier, and for three weeks was chiefly concerned with his cure and the correction of proofs, as appears from a letter, dated on August 23, to Breitkopf and Härtel. In this, speaking about the “Christus am Ölberg,” he says: Here and there the text must remain as in the original. I know that the text is extremely bad, but after one has conceived a unit out of even a bad text, it is difficult to avoid spoiling it by individual changes, and if great stress be laid upon a single word it must be left, and he is a bad composer who does not know how or try to make the best possible thing out of a bad text, and if this is the case a few changes will certainly not improve the whole. He has words of approval for Mozart’s “Don Giovanni” and of dispraise for Italian musicians in general, as see: The favorable reception of Mozart’s “Don Juan” rejoices me as much as if it were my own work. Although I know plenty of unprejudiced Italians who render justice to the German, the backwardness and easy-going disposition of the Italian musicians are no doubt responsible for the same deficiencies in the nation; but I have become acquainted with many Italian amateurs who prefer our music to their Paisiello, etc. (I have been more just to him than his own countrymen.) Varnhagen von Ense, then a young man of 25 years and lieutenant in the Austrian service, came from Prague to Teplitz this summer to pass a few weeks with “The goddess of his heart’s most dear delight,” Rahel Levin. In his “Denkwürdigkeiten” we first meet Beethoven since his letter to Thomson--a solitary rambler in the Schlossgarten at Teplitz, whither, as Brunswick could not or would not accompany him, he had journeyed alone. Varnhagen was with Beethoven every day and came into more intimate relations with him through his eager desire to write texts for him for dramatic compositions or to revise such texts. With Tiedge and the Countess von der Recke, Beethoven formed a warm friendship. Varnhagen wrote to Rahel: “Only Oliva could I endure about me for any length of time; he was sympathetic, but deeply depressed because of violent altercations which he had with Beethoven.” From the source of these communications we also learn that Varnhagen was expected to adapt an opera text for Beethoven and to revise and improve another. In a letter of September 18, Varnhagen himself wrote to Rahel as follows on the subject: “I may translate a French piece as an opera for Beethoven; the other text might be written later, but this contains the entire scenic arrangement. It is entitled ‘Giafar’ and might bring me from 8 to 10 ducats.” But later, “Of Beethoven and Oliva I hear and see nothing; the latter must have been unable to make anything out of the opera which I was to make from a French melodrama and which, unfortunately, another had begun.” [Sidenote: BEETHOVEN AS CUPID’S MESSENGER]