Prince Galitzin, who had already expressed his delight in the new work and who had also been invited to subscribe, suggested that the Mass be published by popular subscription at four or five ducats, as there were not many amateurs who could afford to pay 50 ducats for a written copy. “All that I can do,” the Prince writes in conclusion, “is to beg you to put me down among your subscribers and to send me a copy as soon as possible so that I may produce it at a concert for the benefit of the widows of musicians which takes place annually near Christmas.” Plainly, this was a subscription in the existing category; there was no other, and Beethoven, in view of the invitation to the courts, could not at once entertain the subject of a popular subscription for a printed edition. Galitzin also accedes to a request which had obviously been made to him when the invitation was extended, that the 50 ducats already deposited in Vienna by him for a quartet be applied to the account of the Mass. He writes on September 23 (October 3): “I have just received your letter of the 17th and hasten to answer that I have instructed the house of Henikstein to pay you immediately the 50 ducats which I fancied had long ago been placed at your disposal.” The bankers Henikstein sent the Prince Beethoven’s receipt for the 50 ducats “which we paid to him on the order and account of Your Highness as fee for the Mass which we have forwarded through the High State Chancellary.” The score was in the hands of Prince Galitzin on November 29, but the performance which he had projected did not take place until April 6, 1824. It was the first performance of the Mass anywhere, and Galitzin wrote an enthusiastic account of it to Beethoven under date of April 8.[76] A special invitation to subscribe to the Mass was not extended to the Austrian court for reasons which, no doubt, were understood between Beethoven and Archduke Rudolph and which may have been connected with efforts which were making at the time to secure a court appointment for the composer. At the request of Artaria, however, an invitation was sent to Prince Paul Esterhazy. Beethoven had little confidence in the successful outcome of the appeal, probably with a recollection in his mind of the Prince’s attitude toward him on the occasion of the production of the Mass in C in 1807, to which he seems to refer in a letter to Schindler dated June 1:[77] /# You will kindly again make inquiry of (_illegible_) for a report. I doubt if it will be favorable for I do not expect a good opinion from him, at least not to judge by earlier times! I think that such matters can only be successfully presented to him by women. Beethoven’s suspicious nature had other food. On the outside of this letter he wrote: