True to the traditions of his family, the Count was a musician and one of the best connoisseurs and players of Haydn’s quartets, in which he was accustomed to play the second violin. It is affirmed, evidently on good authority, that he had studied these works under that master himself. It would seem a matter of course, that this man, so nearly connected, too, with Lichnowsky, was one of the first to appreciate and encourage the genius of the young Beethoven upon his removal from Rome to Vienna. In fact, this has been affirmed most positively and discoursed upon at great length; and yet the few known data on this point--all of a negative character--are in conflict with that opinion. Neither Wegeler nor Ries mentions Rasoumowsky. Whatever Seyfried and Schindler may conjecture, all the facts given by them belong to the period on which we are now entering. Up to Op. 58, inclusive, not a composition of Beethoven’s is dedicated to Rasoumowsky. Just now (end of 1805), the Count has given the composer an order for quartets with Russian themes, original or imitated; but only once, in all the contemporary printed or manuscript authorities yet discovered, have the two names been brought into connection; namely, in the subscription to the Trios in 1795, where we find the Countess of Thun, her daughters and the Lichnowskys down (in the aggregate) for 32 copies, and “S. E. le Comte Rasoumoffsky, Embassadeur de Russie”--for one. [Sidenote: COUNTESS ERDÖDY AND BARONESS ERTMANN] The Hungarian Count Peter Erdödy married, June 6, 1796, the Countess Anna Marie Niczky (born 1779), then just seventeen years of age. Reichardt describes her, in December, 1808, as a “very beautiful, fine little woman who from her first confinement (1799) was afflicted with an incurable disease which for ten years has kept her in bed for all but two to three months”--in which he greatly exaggerates the evil of her condition--“but nevertheless gave birth to three healthy and dear children who cling to her like burs; whose sole entertainment was found in music; who plays even Beethoven’s pieces right well and limps with still swollen feet from one pianoforte to another, yet is so merry and friendly and good--all this often saddens me during an otherwise joyous meal participated in by six or eight good musical souls.” There is nothing to show how or when the very great intimacy between the Countess and Beethoven began; but for many years she is prominent among the most useful and valued of his many female friends, and it is not at all improbable that the vicinity of the Erdödy estate at Jedlersee am Marchfelde was one reason for his frequent choice of summer lodgings in the villages on the Danube, north of the city. Their intercourse was at length (about 1820) abruptly terminated by the banishment for life of the Countess beyond the limits of the Austrian Empire--unhappily, for reasons that cannot be impugned. It is a sad and revolting story, over which a veil may be drawn.