“There is nothing inconsistent with ordinary experience and observation--certainly not with Beethoven’s character as a lover--in placing this occurrence here, a year after the failure of the marriage project. His weakness was not in seeking a wife, for this was wise and prudent, but in the selection of the person; in imagining that the young girl’s admiration for the artist--her respect and regard for the friend of her parents and of Gleichenstein--had with increasing years (she was now nineteen) grown into a warmer feeling; and in misconceiving the attentions, civilities and courtesies extended to him by all the members of the family, as encouragement to a suit, the possibility of which had, probably, never entered the mind of any one of them. As Gleichenstein could not have been ignorant of his friend’s recent love-troubles, one may well conceive the surprise, dismay and perplexity, which this sudden whim must have caused him. It placed him in a dilemma of singular difficulty. ~How~ he escaped from it, there are no means of knowing; the affair was, however, so managed, that the rejection of Beethoven’s proposal caused no interruption--or at most a temporary one--in the friendly relations of all the parties immediately concerned. At this distance of time and in the feeble light afforded us, the whole matter has all the appearance of a mere whimsical episode in the composer’s life causing him some fleeting disquiet and mortification; but there is no reason to infer that his disappointment was either very severe or very lasting. If, however, this be a mistaken view, it was all the more fortunate that a previous engagement now forced him to turn his thoughts again to composition and gave him no leisure to play the love-lorn Corydon.” [84] It is not a violent presumption that the portrait referred to here was that of Count Brunswick’s sister Therese; at least there is strong support for it in a letter published by Marie Lipsius (La Mara) in Breitkopf and Härtel’s “Mittheilungen” for March, 1910 (p. 4102). It is from Beethoven to Therese Brunswick, the original of which has not been found, but which exists in the form of a transcript in a letter written by Therese to her sister Josephine, dated February 2, 1811, now in the possession of Therese’s grandniece, Irene de Gerando-Teleki. The letter reads as follows: “Through Franz I have also received a souvenir of our noble Beethoven which gave me much joy; I do not mean his sonatas, which are very beautiful, but a little writing which I will immediately copy literally: