Page:Rolland - Beethoven, tr. Hull, 1927.pdf/114

 still more so alphabet letters. I hope that we shall often have opportunity to assure ourselves that you are a great friend to me, and that I am Your devoted

brother and friend,

L. v..

Coblentz, 28 December, 1825.

My dear old Louis.

I cannot allow one of Ries' ten children to leave Vienna without recalling him to your remembrance. If during the twenty-eight years since I left Vienna, you have not received a long letter from me every two months, you must put it down to your own silence after the first letters which I sent you. It should not be so and especially now that we other old people live so entirely in the past and derive our chief pleasure in recollections of our youth. For me at least, my acquaintance and my firm friendship to you, thanks to your good mother whom God now blesses, is a guiding star in my life, to wards which I turn with pleasureI raise my eyes to you as to a hero, and I am proud to be able to say: 'I have had some influence on his development; he confided in me his ambitions