Your Highness!
The profound regard which for a very long time I have sincerely cherished for Your Highness, has in no wise been affected by the measures which dire necessity has compelled me to adopt. For this necessity has already placed me in the most distressing predicament.
This profound regard of mine makes me feel convinced that the legal counsel who is representing Your Highness in this affair may have acted without explicit authorization from Your Highness when offering me a settlement whereby Your Highness would guarantee your contribution to my income not in Viennese currency but according to the usual scale.
Your Highness is a noble lover of the truth and far above the bickerings which during the lawsuit have seemed to point to the existence of petty intrigues. Doubtless Your Highness will be convinced only by the true facts of the case and on the basis of this principle will deal with such an unjust settlement offered on behalf of Your Highness, a settlement which disgraces the lofty manner in which it was offered to me.
Hence I appeal to Your Highness to remove in my favour the small and really negligible difference in the amounts, and this too without further legal procedure, that is to say, to allow me to take the oath which I am prepared to take at any moment and as an honourable man, and which Herr Oliva too is prepared to take.
I have the honour to describe myself with the deepest homage
Your Highness’s most obedient servant
Ludwig van Beethoven