"_To the rare genius, the great artist, and the good man, from T. B._"

Who was "T. B."? If some one who had recently seen the Bonn portrait
should chance to visit the National Museum in Budapest, he would come
upon the bust of a woman whose features seemed familiar to him. They
would grow upon him as those of the woman with the yellow shawl over
her light-brown hair, a drapery of red on her shoulders and fastened at
her throat, who had looked out at him from the Bonn portrait. The
bust, made at a more advanced age, he would find had been placed in the
museum in honor of the woman who founded the first home for friendless
children in the Austrian Empire; and her name? Countess Therese
Brunswick. She was Beethoven's "Immortal Beloved." "T. B."--Therese
Brunswick. She was the woman who knew that the portrait found in the
old chest was hers; and that the letter had been received by her
shortly after her secret betrothal to Beethoven, and returned by her to
him when he broke the engagement because he loved her too deeply to
link her life to his.

[Illustration: Countess Therese von Brunswick. From the portrait by
Ritter von Lampir in the Beethoven-Haus at Bonn. Redrawn by Reich.]

The tragedy of their romance lay in its non-fulfilment. Beethoven was
a man of noble nature, yet what had he to offer her in return for her
love? His own love, it is true. But he was uncouth, stricken with
deafness, and had many of the "bad moments" of genius. He foresaw
unhappiness for both, and, to spare her, took upon himself the great
act of renunciation. We need only recall him weeping over the picture
of his Therese. And Therese? To her dying day she treasured his
memory. Very few shared her secret. Her brother Franz, Beethoven's