It will be noticed that Giulietta called Therese the “cold, wise one.”  Her purity led her own mother to speak other as an “anchoress.”  Yet it was she who from the time she was fifteen years old to the day of her death cherished the great composer in her heart; and of her love for him were the mementos that he sacredly guarded.  When Therese was fifteen years old she became Beethoven’s pupil.  The lessons were severe.  Yet beneath the rough exterior she recognized the heart of a nobleman.  The “cold, wise one,” the “anchoress,” fell in love with him soon after the lessons began, but carefully hid her feelings from every one.  There is a charming anecdote of the early acquaintance of the composer and Therese.

The children of the house of Brunswick were carefully brought up.  During the music lessons the mother was accustomed to sit in an adjoining room with the door between open.  One bitterly cold winter day Beethoven arrived at the appointed hour.  Therese had practised diligently, but the work was difficult and, in addition, she was nervous.  As a result she began too fast, became disconcerted when Beethoven gruffly called out “Tempo!” and made mistake after mistake, until the master, irritated beyond endurance, rushed from the room and the house in such a hurry that he forgot his overcoat and muffler.  In a moment Therese had picked up these, reached the door and was out in the street with them, when the butler overtook her, relieved her of them and hurried after the composer’s retreating figure.

When the girl entered the doorway again, she came face to face with her mother, who, fortunately, had not seen her in the street, but who was scandalized that a daughter of the house of Brunswick should so far have forgotten herself and her dignity as to have run after a man even if only to the front door, and with his overcoat and muffler.  “He might have caught cold and died,” gasped Therese, in answer to her mother’s remonstrance.  What would the mother have said had she known that her daughter actually had run out into the street, and had been prevented from following Beethoven until she overtook him only by the butler’s timely action!

Therese’s brother Franz was devoted to her.  As a boy he had taken his other sister (afterward Blanka Teleki’s mother) out in a boat on the “Mediterranean,” one of the ponds at Montonvasar, the Brunswick country estate.  The boat upset.  Therese, who was watching them from the bank, rushed in and hauled them out.  Franz was asked if he had been frightened.  “No,” he answered, “I saw my good angel coming.”

When he became intimate with Beethoven, he told the composer about this incident, and also how, after that stormy music lesson, Therese had started to overtake him with his coat and muffler.  Knowing what a lonely, unhappy existence the composer led, he could not help adding that life would be very different if he had a good angel to watch over him, such as he had in his sister.