out
bareheaded into the storm.

Her first horror at his brutality faded before her fear for his health.
"Without hat! Without cloak! Good heavens!" she cried. Seizing them,
she rushed after him--she, the countess, pursued the music-teacher like
a valet! A servant followed her, and took the things from her hand to
give to Beethoven, while she unseen returned; her mother rebuked her and
ordered her to her room. But the lessons continued, and in Therese's
diary Beethoven appeared constantly as "mon maitre," "mon maitre cheri."

She was doomed to a long jealousy. She saw Beethoven fall in love with
her cousin Giulietta Guicciardi. Giulietta came to her for advice,
saying that she longed to throw over Count Gallenberg for "that
beautiful horrible Beethoven--if it were not such a come-down." She did
not condescend, as we have seen, and lived to regret it bitterly.

The idolatry of the pupil finally seized the teacher. Beethoven came to
dote upon the large heart, the pure soul, and the serene mind of
Therese. One night, as he extemporised as only he could, he sang a song
of love to her. One day he said, suddenly:

"I have been like a foolish boy who gathered stones and did not observe
the flower growing by the way."

It was in the spring of 1806 that they became engaged. Only her brother
Franz, who revered Beethoven, was in the secret. They dared not tell
Therese's mother, but Beethoven took up life and art with a new and
thorough zest. Of course, being Beethoven, he waxed wroth often at the
delay and the secrecy. But the sun broke through again. For four years
of his life the engagement endured. Beethoven, it seems, at last grew
furious. He quarrelled with Franz, and in 1810 one day in a frenzy
snapped the bond with Therese. As she herself told Fraeulein Tenger, "The
word that parted us was not spoken by me, but by him. I was terribly
frightened, turned deadly pale, and trembled."

Even after this, the demon in him might have been exorcised, but Therese
had grown afraid of the lightnings of his wrath, and fear outweighed
love in the girl's heart. Sometimes she felt ashamed, in later years, of
her timidity; at other times she was glad that she had not hampered his
art, as any wife must have done. But now she returned him his letters.
He destroyed them all, evidently, except the famous letter to his
"immortal beloved," which he had written in July, 1806, soon after the
betrothal; and with it he kept a portrait she had gi