Beethoven that it would be necessary for him to secure a settled
position and income before the engagement could be published and the
marriage take place. The composer himself saw the justice of this, and
assented.

[Illustration: "Beethoven at Heiligenstadt." From the painting by Carl
Schmidt.]

Early in July Beethoven left Montonvasar for Furen, a health resort on
the Plattensee, which he reached after a hard trip. Fatigued, grieving
over the first parting from Therese, and downcast over his uncertain
future, he there wrote the letter to his "Immortal Beloved," which is
now one of the treasures of the Berlin Library. It is a long letter,
much too long to be given here in full, written for the most part in
ejaculatory phrases, and curiously alternating between love, despair,
courage and hopefulness and commonplace, everyday affairs. Nor will
space permit me to tell how Alexander W. Thayer, an American, who spent
a great part of his life and means in gathering detailed and authentic
data for a Beethoven biography,--which, however, he did not live to
finish,--worked out the year in which this letter was written
(Beethoven gave only the day of the month); showed that it must be
1806; proved further that it could not have been intended for Giulietta
Guicciardi, yet did not venture to state that Countess Therese
Brunswick was the undoubted recipient. Afterward, I believe, he heard
of Miriam Tenger, entered into correspondence with her, and the letters
doubtless will be found among his papers; but he did not live to make
use of the information.

One of the reasons why the identity of the recipient of Beethoven's
letter remained so long unknown was that he did not address her by