One of the reasons why the identity of the recipient of Beethoven’s letter remained so long unknown was that he did not address her by name.  The letter begins:  “My angel, my all, myself!” In order to secure a fixed position, Beethoven had decided to try Prussia and even England, and this intention he refers to when, after apostrophizing Therese as his “immortal beloved,” he writes these burning words: 

“Yes, I have decided to toss abroad so long, until I can fly to your arms and call myself at home with you, and let my soul, enveloped in your love, wander through the kingdom of spirits.”  The letter has this exclamatory postscript: 

  “Eternally yours! 
  Eternally mine! 
  Eternally one another’s!”

The engagement lasted until 1810, four years, when the letters, which through Franz’s aid had passed between Beethoven and Therese, were returned.  Therese, however, always treasured as one of her “jewels” a sprig of immortelle fastened with a ribbon to a bit of paper, the ribbon fading with passing years, the paper growing yellow, but still showing the words:  “L’Immortelle a son Immortelle—­Luigi.”

It had been Beethoven’s custom to enclose a sprig of immortelle in nearly every letter he sent her, and all these sprigs she kept in her desk many, many years.  She made a white silken pillow of the flowers; and, when death came at last, she was laid at rest, her head cushioned on the mementos of the man she had loved.

Mendelssohn and his Cecile

Mendelssohn was a popular idol.  On his death the mournful news was placarded all over Leipsic, where he had made his home, and there was an immense funeral procession.  When the church service was over, a woman in deep mourning was led to the bier, and sinking down beside it, remained long in prayer.  It was Cecile taking her last farewell of Felix.

Mendelssohn was born under a lucky star.  The pathways of most musical geniuses are covered with thorns; his was strewn with roses.  The Mendelssohn family, originally Jewish, was well-to-do and highly refined, and Felix’s grandfather was a philosophical writer of some note.  This inspired the oft-quoted mot of the musician’s father:  “Once I was known as the son of the famous Mendelssohn; now I am known as the father of the famous Mendelssohn.”

Felix was an amazingly clever, fascinating boy.  Coincident with his musical gifts he had a talent for art.  Goethe was captivated by him, and the many distinguished friends of the Mendelssohn house in Berlin adored him.  This house was a gathering place of artists, musicians, literary men and scientists; his genius had the stimulus found in the “atmosphere” of such a household.  There was one member of that household between whom and himself the most tender relations existed,—­his sister Fanny, who became the wife of Hensel, the artist.  The musical