The blind are usually placid and trustful; it is the major affliction of the deaf that they grow suspicious of their intimates and abhorrent of themselves. There is nothing in history more majestic than the battle of this giant soul against his doom; nothing more heartrending than his bitter outcries; nothing loftier than his high determination to serve his turn on earth in spite of all. He was the very King Lear of music, trudging his lonely way with heart broken and hair wild in the storms that buffeted him vainly toward the cliffs of self-destruction. To such a man a home was a refuge pitifully needed, and for a while longingly sought. I have mentioned various women to whom he offered the glorious martyrdom that a life with him must needs have been. There were two others whom he deeply loved. One of these was the famous Italienne, whose very name is honey and romance as he writes it in the dedication of his "Moonlight Sonata" (Op. 27, No. 2)--"_alla damigella contessa Giulietta Guicciardi."_ It was in 1802, when he was thirty-two and she eighteen, that he wrote her so luscious name on the lintel of that sonata, so deep with yearning, so delicious in its middle mood, and so passionately despairing in its close. She had been his pupil. She told Otto Jahn long years after, when she was sixty-eight years old, that Beethoven had first inscribed to her the Rondo, Op. 51, No. 2, but, in his fickle way, he transcribed it to the Countess Lichnowsky, and put her own name over the "Moonlight Sonata" instead. It was probably the beauty and tender reciprocation of Giulietta that inspired Beethoven to write to Wegeler in 1801: "Life has been a little brighter to me of late, since I have mingled more with my fellows. I think you can have no idea, how sad, how intensely desolate, my life has been during the last two years. My deafness, like a spectre, appears before me everywhere, so that I flee from society, and am obliged to act the part of a misanthrope, though you know I am not one by nature. This change has been wrought by a dear, fascinating girl, whom I love, and who loves me. After two years, I bask again in the sunshine of happiness, and now, for the first time, I feel what a truly happy state marriage might be. Unfortunately, she is not of my rank in life. Were it otherwise, I could not marry now, of course; so I must drag along valiantly. But for my deafness, I should long ago have compassed half the world with my art--I must do it still. There exists for me no greater happiness than working at and exhibiting my art. I will meet my fate boldly. It shall never succeed in crushing me."