Have you read the book [Anderson footnote: “This was a French melodrama ‘Les Ruines de Babylon.’ “], my dear Treitschke, and may I hope that you will decide to adapt it? –– Please let me have a reply about this, for I am prevented from going to see you myself. If you have already read the book, please return it to me, so that I too may read it through once more before you begin to adapt it –– And, in any case, if it is your wish that I should soar into the error on the wings of your poetry, please arrange this as soon as possible ––
Your most devoted servant
Ludwig von Beethoven