Beethoven asks his friend Zmeskall for quills, but assures him that as soon as he has found a good source he will organize them himself. At the same time he arranges to met Zmeskall at the "Schwan", an inn in which Beethoven often dined.
Throughout his life Beethoven often turned to well-meaning friends to help him organize his everyday life and to run errands for him. It was his bad hearing in particular which caused him to become increasingly shy of people. He was worried about having contact with the outside world, which he considered to be hostile - mainly because he was only able to communicate with effort. The request to Zmeskall to organize quills for him appears particularly often in his correspondence.
