The mystery is not easily solved. Former biographers have at once come to the conclusion that this was the period in which Beethoven's love for Julia Guicciardi, alluded to in a letter to Wegeler, had reached its climax. This hypothesis has, however, been put to flight by the discovery of Alexander Thayer that the lady was married to Count Gallenberg (afterwards the Keeper of the Archives of the Imperial Opera) in 1803--that is, three years before the composition of the work. Is the B flat major Symphony, after all, as much the exponent of the master passion as is, in another way, the C sharp minor Sonata? Or is it, with its troubled, gloomy opening, expanding into glorious warmth and sunshine, another evidence of Beethoven's resolution to set fate at defiance, and to keep at bay the monster Grief which threatened to annihilate him? Who can tell? When the traveller, suddenly emerging from some mist-hung mountain gorge, steps out upon the rocky platform, he beholds in the distance, beneath his delighted gaze, a landscape bathed in sunshine; so to the poet's excited fancy there must have been present some bright vision, one of those "loftier spirits, who sported with him and allotted to him nobler tasks," drawing a veil over the troubled Past, and pointing him onwards to a glorious Future. Let the Reader take which interpretation he will. We propose briefly to present to him the two sets of letters which show us Beethoven in two different aspects as a lover--the first _pur et simple_, the second Platonic. Nothing is known with certainty of Beethoven's "immortal beloved," whose name vibrates throughout the Adagio of the Moonlight Sonata. The letters to her (of date unknown, written from some baths in Hungary, whither he had been ordered for his health) breathe the very intensity of passion--a passion at times too deep for words.[30] "_Morning, 6th July._ "My Angel! my All! my Second Self! "Only a few words to-day, written with a pencil (with thine). My residence will not be definitely fixed before to-morrow. What a ruinous waste of time!--Why this deep sorrow where Necessity speaks? can our love exist otherwise than by sacrifices, than by our not expecting everything? Canst thou alter the fact that thou art not wholly mine, that I am not wholly thine?--Alas! look into the beauties of Nature, and calm thy mind for what must be endured. Love demands all, and with perfect right, and thus _I feel towards thee_ and _thou towards me_, only thou forgettest so easily that I have to live _for myself_ and _for thee_,--were we perfectly united, thou wouldst feel this trial as little as I do.