in 1809, and he writes that she had paid a
servant extra money to stay with him--a task servants always required
bribing to achieve. But Thayer says that such a menage could not last,
as Beethoven was "too irritable, too freakish and too stubborn, too
easily injured and too hardly reconciled." Beethoven dedicated to her
certain trios, and she erected in one of her parks in Hungary a handsome
temple in his honour, with an inscription of homage to him. In his
letters he calls her his "confessor," and in one he addresses her as
"Liebe, liebe, liebe, liebe Graefin," showing that she was his dearie to
the fourth power.

Also there was Amalie Sebald, "a nut-brown maid of Berlin," a
twenty-five-year-old singer, of beauty and brain. In a letter to Tiedge
in 1812, Beethoven says:

"Two affectionate words for a farewell would have sufficed me; alas! not
even one was said to me! The Countess von der Recke sends me a pressure
of the hand; it is something, and I kiss her hands as a token of
gratitude; but Amalie has not even saluted me. Every day I am angry at
myself in not having profited by her sojourn at Teplitz, seeking her
companionship sooner. It is a frightful thing to make the acquaintance
of such a sweet creature, and to lose her immediately; and nothing is
more insupportable than thus to have to confess one's own
foolishness.... Be happy, if suffering humanity can be. Give, on my
part, to the countess a cordial but respectful pressure of the hand, and
to Amalie a right ardent kiss--if nobody there can see."

In Nohl's collection of Beethoven's letters is an inscription in the
album of the singer, Mine. "Auguste" Sebald (a mistake for "Amalie").
The inscription reads, as Lady Wallace ungrammatically Englishes it:

"Ludwig van Beethoven:
Who even if you would
Forget you never should."

In another work, Nohl mentions the existence of a mass of short notes
from Beethoven to her, showing "not so much the warm, effervescent
passion of youth, as the deep, quieter sentiment of personal esteem and
affection, which comes later in life, and, in consequence, is much more
lasting." One of the letters he quotes. It runs:

"What are you dreaming about, saying that you can be nothing to me? We
will talk this over by word of mouth. I am ever wishing that my presence
may bring peace and rest to you, and that you could have confidence in
me. I shall hope to be better to-morrow, and that we shall be able to
pass a few hours toge