Schlesinger, of Paris, son of the Berlin publisher, was a very insistent as well as persistent courtier, with an auspicious eye to business at all times. He wanted to purchase the two new quartets and did succeed in getting one of them, and he aroused Beethoven’s suspicions by the pertinacity with which he pleaded for permission to attend a rehearsal of the second; the pride of the composer revolted, evidently, at the thought that a publisher should ask to hear a work of his which he purposed buying. But Schlesinger, who had Nephew Karl as his advocate at court in all things, made it appear that he was eager only for the inestimable privilege of hearing the new works of the master, and put in a plea that he might also hear the Quartet which had already been sold to Schott and Sons. Holz discloses a distrust of him very plainly and misses no occasion to warn Beethoven against entangling alliances with the Parisian publisher. Schlesinger wins his way to a very familiar footing with Beethoven, going so far once as to ask him if a report which he had heard that Beethoven had wanted to marry the pianist, Cibbini, was true.[136] The old page does not tell us what answer Beethoven gave, but Schlesinger, who had disclosed his own heartwounds and railed against the fair sex because of his experiences, tells the composer that he shall be the first to make the bride’s acquaintance should he ever get married. Schlesinger appears desirous to become a sort of dealer _en gros_ in Beethoven’s products; he would like the two new Quartets (in A minor and B-flat major); he will publish a Complete Edition and begin with the chamber pieces, to which ends he wants still another quartet and three quintets; he seeks to awaken a literary ambition in the writer of notes--the journal published by the Schlesingers in Berlin will be glad to republish whatever Beethoven may write to the Mayence journal about the joke on Haslinger, and Beethoven ought really to write some essays--on what a symphony and an overture ought to be and on the art of fugue, of which he was now the sole repository. He knows how to approach genius on its most susceptible side. Beethoven must go to England, where he is so greatly admired; he reports that Cherubini had said to his pupils at the Conservatoire in Paris: “The greatest musical minds that ever lived or ever will live, are Beethoven and Mozart.” At dinner, at the suggestion of the same garrulous talker, the company drink the healths of Goethe and Cherubini. Again Schlesinger urges Beethoven to go to London: “I repeat again that if you will go to England for three months I will engage that, deducting your travelling expenses, you will make 1000 pounds, or 25,000 florins W. W. at least, if you give only two concerts and produce some new music.... The Englishmen are proud enough to count themselves fortunate if Beethoven would only be satisfied with them.” When the toast to Cherubini is drunk, Schlesinger takes