A special place among his friends should be given to a few whose appreciation of the master was singularly disinterested and deep. First among these were the von Breunings, who encouraged his genius, bore with the peculiar awkwardness and uncouthness of his youth, and managed, for the most part, to escape his suspicion and anger. It was in their house at the age of sixteen or seventeen that he literally first discovered what personal friendship meant; and it was Stephen von Breuning and his son Gerhart who, with Schindler, waited on him during his final illness. No others are to be compared with the Breunings; but more than one showed a capacity for genuine and unselfish devotion. Nanette Streicher, the daughter of the piano manufacturer, Stein, was among these. Often in his letters Beethoven declares that he does not wish to trouble anyone; and yet he complains to this amiable and capable woman about servants, dusters, spoons, scissors, neckties, stays, and blames the Austrian government, both for his bad servants and smoking chimneys. It is evident that she repeatedly helped him over his difficulties, as did also Baron von Zmeskall, court secretary and distinguished violoncellist, to whom he applied numberless times for such things as quills, a looking glass, and the exchanging of a torn hat, and whom he sent about like an errand boy. Schuppanzigh, the celebrated violinist and founder of the Rasoumowsky quartet, which produced for the first time many of the Beethoven compositions, was a trustworthy and valuable friend. Princes Lichnowsky and Lobkowitz, Count von Brunswick, the Archbishop Rudolph, Countesses Ertmann, Erdödy, Therese von Brunswick, and Bettina Brentano (afterward von Arnim)--the list of titled and fashionable friends is long and all of them seem to have borne with patience his eccentricities and delinquencies in a genuine appreciation of his fine character and genius. Among the few friends who proved faithful to the last, however, was a young musician, Anton Schindler, who for a time was Beethoven’s housemate and devoted slave, and became his literary executor and biographer. Schindler has been the object of much detraction and censure, but both Grove and Thayer regard him as trustworthy, in character as well as in intelligence. He had much to bear from his adored master, who tired of him, treated him with violence and injustice, and finally banished him from his house. But when Beethoven returned to Vienna from the ill-fated visit to Johann in 1826, sick unto death, Schindler resumed his old position as house companion. Both Schindler and Baron von Zmeskall collected notes, memoranda, and letters which have been of great service to later biographers of the composer.