It is common in Bonn to build two houses, one behind the other, upon the same piece of ground, leaving a small court between them,--access to that in the rear being obtained through the one which fronts upon the street. This was the case where the Salomons dwelt, and to the rear house, in November, 1767, Johann van Beethoven brought his newly married wife, Helena Keverich, of Coblentz, widow of Nicolas Laym, a former valet of the Elector. It is near the close of 1770. Helena has experienced "the pleasing punishment that women bear," but "remembereth no more the anguish for joy that a man is born into the world." Her joy is the greater, because last year, in April, she buried, in less than a week after his birth, her first-born, Ludwig Maria,--as the name still stands upon the baptismal records of the parish of St. Remigius, with the names of Kapellmeister Beethoven, and the next-door neighbor, Frau Loher, as sponsors. This second-born is a strong, healthy child, and his baptism is recorded in the same parish-book, Dec. 17, 1770,--the day of, possibly the day after, his birth,--by the name of Ludwig. The Kapellmeister is again godfather, but Frau Gertrude Müller, _née_ Baum, next door on the other side, is the godmother. The Beethovens had neither kith nor kin in Bonn; the families Ries and Salomon, their intimate friends, were Israelites; hence the appearance of the neighbors, Frauen Loher and Müller, at the ceremony of baptism;--a strong corroborative evidence, that No. 515, Bonngasse, was the actual birth-place of Beethoven. The child grew apace, and in manhood his earliest and proudest recollections, save of his mother, were of the love and affection lavished upon him, the only grandchild, by the Kapellmeister. He had just completed his third year when the old man died, and the bright sun which had shone upon his infancy, and left an ineffaceable impression upon the child's memory, was obscured. Johann van Beethoven had inherited his mother's failing, and its effects were soon visible in the poverty of the family. He left the Bonngasse for quarters in that house in the Rheingasse, near the upper steamboat-landing, which now erroneously bears the inscription, _Ludwig van Beethovens Geburtshaus_.