sacred works.

Yes, do not refuse; help your friend to bear with his troubles, his
infirmity. I have also greatly improved my piano-forte playing. I hope
this journey may also turn to your advantage; afterwards you will always
remain with me. I have duly received all your letters, and although I
have answered only a few, you have been always in my mind; and my
heart, as always, beats tenderly for you. _Please keep as a great secret
what I have told you about my hearing; trust no one, whoever it may be,
with it_.

Do write frequently; your letters, however short they may be, console
me, do me good. I expect soon to get another one from you, my dear
friend. Don't lend out my _Quartet_ any more, because I have made many
changes in it. I have only just learnt how to write quartets properly,
as you will see when you receive them.

Now, my dear good friend, farewell! If perchance you believe that I can
show you any kindness here, I need not, of course, remind you to address
yourself first to

Your faithful, truly loving,

L. v. BEETHOVEN.

NO. 45

TO COUNTESS GIULIETTA GUICCIARDI

On the 6th July, 1801, in the morning

My Angel, My All, My Very Self:

Just a few words today, and indeed in pencil--with thine--only till
tomorrow is my room definitely engaged; what an unworthy waste of time
in such matters--why this deep sorrow where necessity speaks! Can our
love endure otherwise than through sacrifices, through restraint in
longing? Canst thou help not being wholly mine, can I, not being wholly
thine? Oh! gaze at nature in all its beauty, and calmly accept the
inevitable--love demands everything, and rightly so. _Thus is it for me
with thee, for thee with me_, only thou so easily forgettest that I must
live for myself and for thee--were we wholly united thou wouldst feel
this painful fact as little as I should--my journey was terrible. I
arrived here only yesterday morning at four o'clock, and as they were
short of horses the mail-coach selected another route--but what an awful
road! At the last stage but one I was warned against traveling by night;
they frightened me with a wood, but that only spurred me on--and I was
wrong, the coach must needs break down, the road being dreadful, a
swamp, a mere country road; without the postillions I had with me I
should have stuck on the way. Esterhazi, by the ordinary road, met with
the same fate with eight horses as I with four--yet it gave me some
pleasure, as succ