Ries describes him as a sad flirt. "Beethoven had a great liking for female society, especially young and beautiful girls, and often when we met out-of-doors a charming face, he would turn round, put up his glass, and gaze eagerly at her, and then smile and nod if he found I was observing him. He was always falling in love with some one, but generally his passion did not last long. Once when I teased him on his conquest of a very beautiful woman, he confessed that she had enchanted him longest, and most seriously of all--namely, seven whole months!" Ries also records a humourous scandal of an occasion when he found Beethoven flirting desperately with a fair unknown; Ries sat down at the piano and improvised incidental music to Beethoven's directions-- "_amoroso," "a malinconico_" and the like. Once a devoted admirer, wife of a Vienna pianist, longed for a lock of the composer's 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 Erdödy, von Brunswick, Wolf-Metternich, the Baroness Ertmann (his "liebe, werthe, Dorothea Cäcilia"), 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.