I have received from here and elsewhere offers of 200 ducats in gold for the mass. I think I can get 100 florins W. W. more. On this point I am waiting for a letter which I will send you at once, the matter might then be presented to Simrock, who will certainly not expect me to lose so much. Till then please be patient and do not think that you have acted magnanimously towards an unworthy man. [Sidenote: THREE SONATAS AT A BREATH] Brentano informed Simrock of the situation; but the subject is now carried over into the next year and must be left for the nonce, while we take up the history of some other compositions. The last three pianoforte sonatas, Op. 109, 110 and 111, belong to this period. Also the Bagatelles Op. 119, Nos. 7 to 11 inclusive. Their story is known. Friedrich Starcke, Chapelmaster of an Austrian regiment of infantry, had undertaken the publication of a pianoforte method which he called the “Wiener Pianoforteschule.” Part III of the work, which appeared early in 1821, contained these five Bagatelles under the title “Trifles” (_Kleinigkeiten_). Above them Starcke printed: “A contribution from the great composer to the publisher.” They must have been asked for in 1820. Somewhere about February of that year an unidentified hand writes in the Conversation Book: “Starcke wants a little music-piece by you for the second part of his _Klavierschule_, for which he has contributions from the leading composers besides short notices.... We must give him something. Notwithstanding his great deserts in music and literature he is extremely modest, industrious and humble.... He understands the art of compiling well. There are now weaklings everywhere even among the strong.” To this appeal Beethoven yielded. He wrote the five Bagatelles, sketches for which are found amongst some for the Sonata in E major (Op. 109) and the _Benedictus_ of the mass. No. 6 is also sketched among studies for the _Credo_. No doubt these little pieces were some of the “potboilers” (_Brodarbeit_) referred to in the letter to Brentano; also some folksong arrangements; and it may even be, that Beethoven included also the three great sonatas. Schindler relates that when Beethoven heard that it was bruited about that he had written himself out, his invention was exhausted, and that he had taken up Scottish melodies like Haydn in his old age, he seemed amused and said: “Wait a while, you’ll soon learn differently.” Schindler then adds: “Late in the Fall (1820), returned from his summer sojourn in Mödling, where like a bee he had been engaged busily in gathering ideas, he sat himself down to his table and wrote out the three sonatas Op. 109, 110, 111 ‘in a single breath,’ as he expressed it in a letter to Count Brunswick in order to quiet the apprehension of his friends touching his mental condition.” Schindler was dubious about the “single breath” and, indeed, there was a considerable lapse of time between the writing of the first of the