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mouth, her thin, beautifully curved lips – but could not help it.
The silence dragged on. The Empress’ ladies in waiting, who were standing nearby, looked with all their eyes at this plain-looking, strange gentleman. “So, Mr. Beethoven, do me a favour, please?” The Empress asked again, pointing to the piano in the corner.
Beethoven looked where her hand pointed, and immediately realized what she wanted from him. He sat down at the instrument, picked up the lid. He did not even have time to figure out what he would be playing, as the empress stood next to him and put the scores in front of him – a bagatelle in A-minor. He would not look at the score; he remembered the entire play by heart, while playing it until dawn. And so he began to play – for one and only woman, to whom he dedicated this little thing, this “knick-knack”, as the French say, the “bagatelle”.
He felt behind his back the breath of the most beautiful woman in the world; he was infinitely in love with her and felt completely unhappy. The crescendo sounded like heartbreak. He did not hear his play, and only when the last sound of the piano slowly died away, he came to himself, slowly rose, and turned to the Empress.
The face of Elizaveta Alekseev’s was shining with some kind of inner light. Her eyes shone with gratitude. Her lips parted and said something, but again he did not understand her. The ladies-in-waiting standing at the wall applauded – he saw it. Then Elisa, the goddess, the angel, went to her table, took something there and approached him again, coming so close that he caught the scent of her skin.
“I’m totally ecstatic, Mr. Beethoven,” said the Empress. – “It was unforgettable. Thank you for such a gift. Let me give you this jewellery-box as a token of my gratitude.”
And then she handed the composer a small carved box with 50 ducats. The audience ended. Beethoven bowed in silence and left. Since that day, he has never played in public again. Moreover, for three years after this meeting, he could not write anything. Three years – and not a line... Ten years later, he learned that the Russian Empress had died as suddenly as her husband. Beethoven became seriously ill on the same day. Doctors could not diagnose anything, and he got progressively worse...
...When friends began to sort through the papers left after the death of Beethoven, they found a secret letter in the wardrobe with a strange address – “To Immortal Beloved.” Ten sheets of paper. And also they found a small box with 50 ducats – all the fortune that was left on the death of the music genius.