name. The letter begins: "My angel, my all, myself!" In order to
secure a fixed position, Beethoven had decided to try Prussia and even
England, and this intention he refers to when, after apostrophizing
Therese as his "immortal beloved," he writes these burning words:

"Yes, I have decided to toss abroad so long, until I can fly to your
arms and call myself at home with you, and let my soul, enveloped in
your love, wander through the kingdom of spirits." The letter has this
exclamatory postscript:

"Eternally yours!
Eternally mine!
Eternally one another's!"

The engagement lasted until 1810, four years, when the letters, which
through Franz's aid had passed between Beethoven and Therese, were
returned. Therese, however, always treasured as one of her "jewels" a
sprig of immortelle fastened with a ribbon to a bit of paper, the
ribbon fading with passing years, the paper growing yellow, but still
showing the words: "_L'Immortelle à son Immortelle--Luigi_."

It had been Beethoven's custom to enclose a sprig of immortelle in
nearly every letter he sent her, and all these sprigs she kept in her
desk many, many years. She made a white silken pillow of the flowers;
and, when death came at last, she was laid at rest, her head cushioned
on the mementos of the man she had loved.