"My good angel appeared to me this morning," was Beethoven's reply.

[Illustration: Ludwig van Beethoven]

After the composer's death, in 1827, the portrait was found in the old
chest, and also a letter, in his handwriting and evidently written to a
woman, whose name, however, was not given, but who was addressed by
Beethoven as his "Immortal Beloved." The letter was regarded as a
great find, and biographer after biographer has stated that it must
have been written to the Countess Giulietta Guicciardi, to whom he
dedicated the famous "Moonlight Sonata." There was, however, one
woman, who survived Beethoven more than thirty years, and who, during
that weary stretch of time, knew whose was the portrait that had been
found in the old chest and the identity of the woman who had returned
to him the letter addressed to his "Immortal Beloved," after the
strange severance of relations which both had continued to hold sacred.
But she suffered in silence, and never even knew what had become of the
picture.

This precious picture, which Beethoven had held in his hands and wetted
with his tears, passed, with his death, into the possession of his
brother Carl's widow. No one knew who it was, or took any interest in
it. In 1863 a Viennese musician, Joseph Hellmesberger, succeeded in
having Beethoven's remains transferred to a metallic casket, and the
Beethoven family, in recognition of his efforts, made him a present of
the portrait. Later it was acquired by the Beethoven Museum, in Bonn,
where the master was born in 1772. There it hangs beside his own
portrait, and on the back still can be read the inscription, in a
feminine hand: