In 1860, when the leaves of thirty-three autumns had fallen upon the
composer's grave and the Countess had gone to her last resting-place, a
voice, like an echo from a dead past, linked the names of Beethoven and
the woman he had loved. There was at that time in Germany a virtuosa,
Frau Hebenstreit, who when a young girl had been a pupil of Beethoven's
friend, the violinist Schuppanzigh. At a musical, in the year
mentioned, she had just taken part in a performance of the third
"Leonore" overture, when, as if moved to speak by the beauty of the
music, she suddenly said: "Only think of it! Just as a person sits to
a painter for a portrait, Countess Therese Brunswick was the model for
Beethoven's Leonore. What a debt the world owes her for it!" After a
pause she went on:

"Beethoven never would have dared marry without money, and a countess,
too--and so refined, and delicate enough to blow away. And he--an
angel and a demon in one! What would have become of them both, and of
his genius with him?" So far as I have been able to discover, this was
the first even semi-public linking of the two names.

Yet all these years there was one person who knew the secret--the woman
who as a school-girl had placed the wreath of immortelles on
Beethoven's grave for her much-loved Countess Therese Brunswick.
Through this act of devotion Miriam Tenger seemed to become to the
Countess a tie that stretched back to her past, and though they saw
each other only at long intervals, Miriam's presence awakened anew the
old memories in the Countess's heart, and from her she heard piecemeal,
and with pauses of years between, the story of hers and Beethoven's
romance.