outrageously unkempt hair, and asked a friend to get her
one. At his suggestion, Beethoven, who was a practical joker of boorish
capabilities, sent her a tuft from the chin of a goat. The trick was
discovered, and the scorned woman vented her fury in a letter; the
repentant Beethoven made ample apology to her, and spent his wrath on
the head of the suggester of the mischief.

Crowest spins a pretty yarn of Beethoven's acting as _"postillon
d'amour"_ by carrying love letters for a clandestinely loving couple.

Many of his own love-longings were couched in the form of the
dedications prefixed to his compositions. The piano sonata, Op. 7, was
inscribed to the Countess Babette von Keglevics, later the Princess
Odeschalchi, and is called for her sake "der Verliebte." Other
"gewidmets" were to the Princesses Lichtenstein and von Kinsky, to the
Countesses von Browne, Lichnowsky, von Clary, von Erdoedy, von Brunswick,
Wolf-Metternich, the Baroness Ertmann (his "liebe, werthe, Dorothea
Caecilia"), and to Eleonora von Breuning.

All these make a fairly good bead-roll of love-affairs for a busy, ugly,
and half-savage man. It is not so long as Leporello's list of Don
Juan's conquests, "but, marry, t'will do, t'will serve." I find I have
catalogued twenty-six thus far (counting the tailor's three daughters as
one). And more are to come.

And yet, in the face of such a directory of desire, you'll find Von
Seyfried and Haslinger venturing the statement, that "Beethoven was
never married, and, what was more marvellous still, never had any love
passages in his life," while Francis Hueffer can speak of "his grand,
chaste way." On this latter point there is room for debate. Crowest
adopts both sides at once by saying: "In the main, authorities concur in
Beethoven's attachments being always honourable. There can be no doubt,
however, that he was an impetuous suitor, ready to continue an
acquaintance into a more serious bond on the slenderest ground, and
without the slightest regard to the consequences on either side." Thayer
takes a middle ground,--that, in the Vienna of his time and his social
grade, it was impossible that Beethoven should have been a Puritan,
while he was, however, a man of distinctly clean mind. He could not
endure loose talk, and he once boxed the ears of a barmaid who teased
him. All his life he had a horror of intrigue with another man's wife,
and he once snubbed a man who conducted such an affair.

Why, then,