A “Divina Commedia” it is to be?  That is a splendid idea, and I enjoy the music in anticipation.  But I must have a little talk with you about it.  That “Hell” and “Purgatory” will succeed I do not call into question for a moment, but as to “Paradise” I have some doubts, which you confirm by saying that your plan includes choruses.  In the Ninth Symphony the last choral movement is decidedly the weakest part, although it is historically important, because it discloses to us in a very naive manner the difficulties of a real musician who does not know how (after hell and purgatory) he is to represent paradise.  About this paradise, dearest Franz, there is in reality a considerable difficulty, and he who confirms this opinion is, curiously enough, Dante himself, the singer of Paradise, which in his “Divine Comedy” also is decidedly the weakest part.  I have followed Dante with deepest sympathy through the “Inferno” and the “Purgatorio;” and when I emerged from the infernal slough, I washed myself, as does the poet, with the water of the sea at the foot of the Mountain of Purgatory.  I enjoyed the divine morning, the pure air.  I rose step by step, deadened one passion after the other, battled with the wild instinct of life, till at last, arrived at the fire, I relinquished all desire of life, and threw myself into the glow in order to sink my personality in the contemplation of Beatrice.  But from this final liberation I was rudely awakened to be again, after all, what I had been before, and this was done in order to confirm the Catholic doctrine of a God Who, for His own glorification, had created this hell of my existence, by the most elaborate sophisms and most childish inventions, quite unworthy of a great mind.  This problematic proof I rejected from the bottom of my soul, and remained dissatisfied accordingly.  In order to be just to Dante I had, as in the case of Beethoven, to occupy the historic standpoint; I had to place myself in Dante’s time and consider the real object of his poem, which, no doubt, was intended to advocate a certain thing with his contemporaries--I mean the reform of the Church.  I had to confess that in this sense he understood marvellously well his advantage of expressing himself in an infallible manner through means of popular and generally accepted ideas.  Before all, I cordially agreed with him in his praise of the saints who had chosen poverty of their own free-will.  I had further to admire even in those sophisms his high poetic imagination and power of representation, just as I admire Beethoven’s musical art in the last movement of his “Ninth Sympthony.”  I had further to acknowledge, with deepest and most sublime emotion, the wonderful inspiration through means of which the beloved of his youth, Beatrice, takes the form in which he conceives the Divine doctrine; and in so far as that doctrine teaches the purification of personal egoism through love, I joyfully acknowledge the doctrine of Beatrice.  But the fact that Beatrice