ther in the enjoyment of nature while you remain
here. Good night, dear Amalie; many, many thanks for the proof you give
me of your attachment to your friend,

"BEETHOVEN."

There are other of these notes in Thayer's biography. She seems to have
called the composer "a tyrant," and he has much playfulness of allusion
to the idea, and there is much about the wretchedness of his health.
Amalie Sebald seems to have been of great solace to him, but, like all
the rest, she married some one else, Justice-councillor Krause.

It was for her that Beethoven composed his cycle of songs, "To the
far-away love" _[An die ferne Geliebte],_ according to Thayer; and of
her that he wrote to Ries: "All good wishes to your wife. I, alas, have
none; I have found but one, and her I can never possess."

Years later he said to his friend Giannatasio that five years before he
had loved unhappily; he would have considered marriage the happiness of
his life, but it was "not to be thought of for a moment, almost an utter
impracticability, a chimera." Still, he said, his love was as strong as
ever; he had never found such harmony, and, though he never proposed, he
could never get her out of his mind.

In 1812 Carl Maria von Weber was in Berlin, and became ever after a
devoted admirer of Amalie's virtues, her intellect, and her beauty.

Five years later we learn of Beethoven's receiving letters and presents
from "a Bremen maiden," a pianist, Elise Mueller. And there was a poetess
who also annoyed him.

In this same year, 1817, he was much in the society of "the beautiful
and amiable" Frau Marie L. Pachler-Koschak, of Gratz. He had met her in
1812, and admired her playing. As late as 1826 we have letters from her,
inviting him to visit her in Gratz. But in 1817--he being then
forty-seven years old--the acquaintance was so cordial that Schindler,
who observed it, called it an "autumnal love," though the woman's son
later asserted that it was only a kinship of "artistic sympathy,"--in
fact, Beethoven called her "a true foster-mother to the creations of his
brain." Thayer says, however, that Beethoven never met her till after
she married. Beethoven is implicated in the riddle of the letters of
Bettina Brentano von Arnim. This freakish young woman had some
acquaintance with Goethe, and after his death published letters alleged
to have been sent to her by him. She also gave the world certain letters
said to have come to her from Beethoven. It has be