trust Carl to her kindness, and entirely rely on her motherly
care.

185.

TO ZMESKALL.

Baden, September 5, 1816.

DEAR Z.,--

I don't know whether you received a note that I recently left on the
threshold of your door, for the time was too short to enable me to see you.
I must therefore repeat my request about another servant, as the conduct of
my present one is such that I cannot possibly keep him.[1] He was engaged
on the 25th of April, so on the 25th of September he will have been five
months with me, and he received 50 florins on account. The money for his
boots will be reckoned from the third month (in my service), and from that
time at the rate of 40 florins per annum; his livery also from the third
month. From the very first I resolved not to keep him, but delayed
discharging him, as I wished to get back the value of my florins. In the
mean time if I can procure another, I will let this one leave my service on
the 15th of the month, and also give him 20 florins for boot money, and 5
florins a month for livery (both reckoned from the third month), making
altogether 35 florins. I ought therefore still to receive 15 florins, but
these I am willing to give up; in this way I shall at all events receive
some equivalent for my 50 florins. If you can find a suitable person, I
will give him 2 florins a day while I am in Baden, and if he knows how to
cook he can use my firewood in the kitchen. (I have a kitchen, though I do
not cook in it.) If not, I will add a few kreutzers to his wages. As soon
as I am settled in Vienna, he shall have 40 florins a month, and board and
livery as usual, reckoned from the third month in my service, like other
servants. It would be a good thing if he understood a little tailoring. So
now you have my proposals, and I beg for an answer by the 10th of this
month at the latest, that I may discharge my present servant on the 2d,
with the usual fortnight's warning; otherwise I shall be obliged to keep
him for another month, and every moment I wish to get rid of him. As for
the new one, you know pretty well what I require,--_good, steady conduct_,
a _good character_, and _not to be of a bloodthirsty nature_, that I may
feel my life to be safe, as, for the sake of various scamps in this world,
I should like to live a little longer. By the 10th, therefore, I shall
expect to hear from you on this affair. If you don't run restive, I will
soon send you my treatise on the four violoncello string