ven him. As for
Therese, she, too, had kept a copy of this letter, and as she told
Fraeulein Tenger:

"I have read it so often that I know it by heart--like a poem--and was
it not a beautiful poem? I can only humbly say to myself, 'That man
loved thee,' and thank God for it."

She also showed a sheet of old paper, with a spray of immortelles, and
on it an inscription from Ludwig:

"L'immortelle a son Immortelle. LUIGI."

These immortelles she sewed into a white silk cushion, with a request
that it be placed under her head in her coffin.

When Fraeulein Tenger had first met the countess as a child she had been
asked to go every year on March 27th and lay a wreath of immortelles on
Beethoven's grave. The acquaintance continued, and they met again at
long intervals till the countess's death in 1861. Fraulein Tenger wrote
her book in her old age when she had lost her diaries, but enough of her
reminiscences remain to prove Thayer's ingenious guesses correct.

Therese von Brunswick was Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved," and the
picture found with the letter was her portrait. It was painted by Lampi,
when Therese was about twenty-eight; and on the frame can be seen still
the words:

"To the rare genius, to the great artist, to the good man, from

T.B."

The picture is in the Beethoven Museum at Bonn, and in the National
Museum at Pesth is a bust of Therese in her later years, erected in her
honour because she organised out of her charity the first infants'
school in the Austrian empire, and did many other good works. It is both
pity and solace that the noble woman did not wed Beethoven. She was his
muse for years. That was, as she said, something to thank God for. She
was also a beautiful spiritual influence on him.

Once the Baron Spaun found Beethoven kissing Therese's portrait and
muttering: "Thou wast too noble--too like an angel." The baron withdrew
silently, and returning later found Beethoven extemporising in heavenly
mood. He explained: "My good angel has appeared to me."

In 1813 he wrote in his diary:

"What a fearful state to be in, not to be able to trample down all my
longings for the joys of a home, to be always revelling in these
longings. O God! O God! look down in mercy upon poor, unhappy Beethoven,
and put an end to this soon; let it not last much longer!"

And so Beethoven never married. The women, indeed, whom he loved, whom
he proposed to, always awoke with a shock to the risk of joining fo