became inexplicably incongruous. He would have a care that such a thing should not occur again. Whether or not the communication was ever printed does not appear; neither does it appear that Beethoven took the matter so greatly to heart as his letter was calculated to make the public believe, had it been printed. In August he wrote to his new friend Karl Holz: “I hear with amazement that the Mayence street-boys really abused a joke! It is contemptible; I assure you it was not at all my intention. What I meant was to have Castelli write a poem on these lines under the name of the musical Tobias, which I would set to music. But since it has so happened, it must be accepted as a dispensation from heaven. It will form a companion-piece to Goethe’s Bardt _sans comparaison_ with all other authors. But I believe Tobias has wronged you a little, etc.,--_Voila_ it is better to be revenged than to fall into the maw of a monster.[125] I can’t shed tears over it but must laugh like--.” To his nephew he wrote: “It was not right for Mayence to do a thing like that, but as it is done it will do no harm. The times demand strong men to castigate these petty, tricky, miserable little fellows”; and then, as if repenting him of the sounding phrase, he wrote in the margin: “much as my heart rebels against doing a man harm; besides it was only a joke and I never thought of having it printed.” It would seem that Haslinger must have known of the skit before it was sent to Schott, for in a letter of February 5, Beethoven suggested to the firm, as a joke, to ask Haslinger for the “romantic biography” which Beethoven had written of him, and added: “That is the way to handle this fellow, a heartless Viennese, who is the one who advised me not to deal with you. _Silentium!_” And he describes Steiner as a “rascally fellow and skinflint,” and Haslinger as a “weakling” whom he made useful to himself in some things. Haslinger may have felt incensed at the publication, but he eventually accepted it in an amiable spirit and it did not lead to any rupture of friendship between the men.