Franz Liszt (L Homme D Amour)

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FRANZ LISZT

(L'Homme d* Amour)
by

GUY DE POURTALES

Translated from the French by
ELEANOR STIMSON BROOKS

"Great music it the handwriting }
the complete w."-PAUL VAL&Y

NEW YORK
HENRY HOLT AND COMPANY

BY
JBtOLX AND C O M JP A. N

THE
XJNIXED STATES OF

THE LIFE OF LISZT

I cannot conceive of the spirit of music as residing anywhere but
in love.- WAGNER.

ADAM LISZT and his young wife, Anna Lager, had
no sooner finished moving into their new house at
Raiding than they began to find time heavy on their
hands.

The new superintendent, who was the sole townsman
among the peasant huts of this remote village, found
nothing that appealed to him in the ugly building that
was to serve as his quarters on Prince Esterhazy's
estate. The memory of Eisenstadt, where he had
spent so many delightful years, filled him with home-
sickness. Eisenstadt lay several hours distant from
Raiding, and although both were situated in the district
of QEdenburg, the little town, across the Hungarian
plains, seemed as far away as happiness. It was not
that Adam Liszt was naturally gloomy, but he loved
the life of society and music. Nothing delighted him
more than his master's beautiful assemblies when that
magnate's court Was glorified by the presence of the
illustrious Haydn and the famous Hummel, Mozart's
favorite pupil. He almost regretted that he had shown
himself so reliable an agent, since these very qualities
had brought him the present detested promotion. But

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2 FRANZ LISZT

like the good Christian and faithful employee that
he was, Adam Liszt resigned himself to his duties.

His young wife accepted this new solitude with a
better grace. In the evening she obliged him to sit
down at the piano or play on the guitar and did her
best to console him for a life which he often referred
to as a failure, for he believed himself born for the
career of a virtuoso. Haydn himself agreed with him
in this. But it was now too late to go back; and, aban-
doning the keyboard with some bitterness, Adam Liszt
set himself to the study of his master's rents.

One day, in the early spring of 1811, while the
young couple were strolling about the garden, Anna
confided to her husband that she believed she was
going to have a child. They decided that it was to
be a boy and that he should travel the glorious but
difficult road of which his father continued to dream
so vainly. As the day of her confinement approached,
Mme. Liszt seldom left her room, and in the evening
the superintendent would read the newspapers aloud
to her. Towards the middle of October they were
much interested in the comet that was visible every
night in the sky. It seemed a good omen. If only the
child might be born while it still shone ! During the
night of the 21-22, in the very nick of time, the ex-
pected son made his entry into the world.

He received the name of Franz. He was so puny
that at first he was not expected to live, and during
his first years his parents had to wage an unremitting
battle for his life. Fever and a nervous ailment alter-
nately ravaged his feeble body and brought on faint-
ing fits. Once, returning from a tour of inspection,

FRANZ LISZT 3

the father found his wife crushed with grief by the
bedside of the dead child. The village carpenter took
his measurements and prepared the coffin. But little
Franz came back to life in spite of the doctor. These
troubles lasted until his sixth year when his health be-
came established.

Meanwhile, life in Raiding had lost none of its
severity, and, except in vacations when they flew to
Eisenstadt, the Liszts lived like pariahs on their spot
of earth. A few rare visits from friends, the books
from a library chosen by chance, which the prince had
placed at the disposal of his superintendent, the piano
and the guitar were the only distractions.

One Sunday, when the elder Liszt had sat down at
the piano to play Rie's Concerto in C-sharp-minor,
little Franz, who at the time was six years old, stole
in beside him. With his head bent attentively, his
lips half open, the child listened to the voices that rose
from the ebony box where, one by one, or all together,
they were born into life. He sat without stirring, so
marvellous did their language seem to him. When
his father had brought this extraordinary conversa-
tion to an end, lighted his pipe and taken up again
his eternal papers, the child ran out into the garden^
so as to retain as long as possible what these invisit
friends had said to him. It became a game for
to recover their whispers, and that very evening, a?
table, he sang them through without a mistake. M.
and Mme. Liszt were struck dumb with astonishment,
and this increased when Franz announced that ;he
wished to learn music without losing a day. The
superintendent gazed long at his son, at first with a

4 FRANZ LISZT

little envy, then with growing pride. He had a sudden
intuition that he would realize, after all, the old dream
that for him had been frustrated by circumstances ; and,
taking the' child in his arms, he placed him once more
beside him at the piano. Then he played over again
the final movement of the Concerto.

"When you grow up," he asked, "what would you
like to be?"

"That man there," said the child, pointing to a
lithograph of Beethoven that hung on the wall.

Adam Liszt was enough of a poet to believe in pro-
phetic visions. The very next day he gave his son
his first lesson, and after the tenth day there no longer
remained the shadow of a doubt in his mind: this
boy was going to repeat the career of Mozart. There
was no getting him away from the piano. He spent
hours over his scales, understood everything instantly,
and transposed from one key to another without the
least hesitation. His ear was miraculously accurate,
and his small hand, with its limber fingers, seemed
suited in advance to the difficulties of execution. Even
more surprising was his memory, which retained every-
thing without effort. In order to test him, M. Liszt
^rould now play for long hours before his son, and
the latter, taking his place at the piano, would after-
wards render in his own fashion, and as well as his
childish fingers could, the most varied pieces. They
had expected a gifted child; they had found a prodigy.
But the enthusiastic father never noticed that the eyes
of the overworked boy were growing hollow and his
features drawn. Three months of this regimen

FRANZ LISZT 5

brought him for a second time to the verge of death.

It became necessary to stop all this music and turn
him out to pasture. Franz would not consent to lie
down unless his mother replaced the forbidden delight
by reading aloud to him. She read him Grimm's
Fairy Tales, but the pleasure they gave him at first
did not last long. He soon came to prefer history and
the lives of the saints, and he delighted in heroic tales.
The priest of Raiding, who was deeply interested in
the child, came out two or three times a week to in-
struct him in writing and arithmetic; and these lessons,
like those given by his mother, always ended in stories :
the story of the Bible, the Life and Passion of our
Lord, tales drawn from the Fathers of the Church.
Franz asked searching questions and showed a tendency
to mystical exaltation which his parents, careful as
they were in their spiritual duties, rather tried to
discourage. Often they heard him talking in his sleep
and groaning, or his mother would find him at prayer,
his face glistening with tears.

When this crisis was safely over, and the child's
health improved and he grew taller, he was allowed to
resume, with moderation, the beloved lessons. At once
he was seized with a rage for improvising. Like many
children, he first sought for a theme, then added varia-
tions and transposed it into several keys. One day
in his office, the elder Liszt heard some modulations
so well arranged, so fresh in expression, that he be-
came curious to know what score his son was playing.
He pushed the door open a crack and saw him seated
at the keyboard without any music at all. The
strangest part was that he did not stop with easy

6 FRANZ LISZT

effects or repetition, but, going straight ahead, he was
already perfecting his arrangements of phrases and
themes and binding them together. The priest, the
postmaster, a few neighbors who had heard what was
going on, sometimes dropped in of an evening to drink
a glass of beer and listen to the young prodigy.

Raiding, that little oasis in the midst of the Hunga-
rian plain, was not on the line of travel. The only
strangers who ever stopped there were the inspector
of tHe~jprince's estates or some troop of gypsies. Now
and then, especially in the summertime, the village
would be filled with a hubbub of bells and songs, and
a whole tribe of these wandering poets would set up
their tents and draw up their carts on the square. The
tattered and magnificent Romanies encamped in all
their splendor. One by one, the women came out of
their wagons leading clusters of children and the camp
settled down in a few moments in the presence of a
gallery of curious lookers-on. An old man would make
an announcement in his mixed Hungarian jargon ; the
peasants would bring their plowshares and their
notched scythes to be repaired and lead in to the
gypsies the horses that had lost their shoes. Till eve-
ning the time passed in these commonplace tasks.
Then the camp really came to life. They lighted their
torches and built a great bonfire into which every one
flung a stick, and the gyspy women drew from their
boxes glittering scarfs, golden rings and ear-rings,
necklaces of amber and coral. The men snatched up
their violins and cymbals.

Then out of the silence would arise a slow, monoto-
nous melody. The old women would appear, a dozen

FRANZ LISZT 7

of them, raising their witchlike arms and pointing pro-
phetic fingers to heaven. They glided backward and
forward, came and went, following the music. In
cracked voices they chanted: "Enjoy your passions,
gratify your desires. See with what little glory dies
the dry, old tree. Do not fall in love, poor heart,
or you will be drenched with bitterness. Love your
life, shut your eyes, roll on the moss. Dance and
drink."

When the old women had ceased, a young woman
stepped forward and uttered a long, strident cry.
Then violins and cymbals crashed together while she
sang:

"In the evening the pretty girl comes home with her geese,
The black-eyed girl with the round cheeks.
She sings, 'Tega, tega, tega . . .
Don't seek me, you whom I do not love,
You do not please my heart.
What do I care for silken tents?

I can find heaven with my well-beloved under his ragged tent.
Tega, tega . . .

With him I have love enough to last forever.
But the heart sickens to tears at gold brocade.
Tega, tega

Then one of the old women stepped out towards
the audience to tell fortunes. The tense, passionate
fingers of the fortune-teller grasped the hard hands
of the men and the delicate palms of the girls. "You
are going to be unhappy, for you are fool enough to
believe in love. For you there is a large fortune wait-
ing. And you let me see you are going to have
five children who will bring you many cares ..."

8 FRANZ LISZT

The gypsies went on with their sinuous dances, their
elastic leaps, chanting a shrill song in which the tonic,
third and dominant united in an unbroken harmony of
sorrow.

In the front row, little Liszt listened to the marvel-
lous message of the wandering virtuosi.

II

THE superintendent of Raiding was returning with
a sort of exaltation to his former dreams. His ba-
rouche was threading the road to QEdenburg and to
Eidenstadt, where, accompanied by his son, he was
going to visit some of his friends. After the greetings
were over, they placed Franz at the piano. What a
joy to see their surprise, their enthusiasm! What a
compensation for these wasted and scattered years !
The Kleins and the Zirkels could not get over their
astonishment. The Lagers shook their heads, full of
reserve and anxieties, for where was all this going to
lead this young monster with his attractive face?
Edward, M. Liszt's younger brother, was the most
delighted of all ; he embraced the child with rapture.
As for Baron von Braun, a blind, clever dilettante, he
begged M. Liszt to allow the child to appear at a
concert he would give for his benefit that autumn
at QEdenburg. M. Liszt was quite willing, and they
set to work at once to arrange a programme. The
Concerto of Reis, in E-flat, for piano and orchestra,
seemed the most appropriate. If it was necessary, he
could add here and there a little fresh improvisation.

They set off on the eve of the great day. But if
the father was nervous, Franz himself felt not the
least anxiety. As the carriage rolled across the plain
where the late grass was dying, he was reading in his
corner, completely absorbed in a recent work of the

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10 FRANZ LISZT

great Goethe which he had carried off from the library.
It was the Elective Affinities; and while, for the twen-
tieth time, the father and mother calculated the chances
for success, Franz was doing his best to understand it.
"The arts are the surest means of escaping from the
world; they are also the surest means of uniting our-
selves to it. Art is concerned with what is difficult
and good. In seeing what is difficult performed with
ease, we begin to think of the impossible." A dark
saying, but full of promise.

" On the day of the concert he had an attack of fever.
The room was crowded. When his turn arrived, the
little boy mounted the platform, bowed as he had been
taught, and sat down at the piano. From the very
first measures it was evident that the mite was already
a master. His success was prodigious, and so great
was the applause that he repeated his improvisations
on the well-known themes. At the end of the per-
formance, everyone wished to see him and speak to
him, and M. Liszt seized the opportunity to organize
on the spot a second concert at which Franz, this time,
should be the only performer. The enthusiasm was
increasing to such a point that the father had only one
thought, to have his son play before Prince Esterhazy.
The fame of these triumphs spread abroad and the
magnate, wishing to show his sympathy for his faith-
ful functionary, placed at his disposal the drawing-
rooms of his palace at Presbourg.

It was on the 26th of November that the great event
took place. It must be so described because, while
the first two soirees were fortunate ventures, this eve-
ning was to determine the boy's future. All the aris-

FRANZ LISZT 11

tocracy of Presbourg were gathered together for the
performance ; and Franz played his beloved Beethoven,
improvised, and rendered without effort and in the
desired rhythm the bravura passages which several
great noblemen placed under his eyes. There was gen-
eral astonishment. When it was learned that the
father did not possess the means to give his son a com-
plete musical education, the purses flew open. Counts
Apponyi, Amadee, Esterhazy, Szapary and Viczay
instantly settled upon him, for a period of six years,
an income of six hundred Austrian florins.

He returned to Raiding. But in this brief time
everything had changed. The obscure little family
that had set out a fortnight before returned almost
famous. M. Liszt spoke of asking the prince for a
long vacation, spoke even of perhaps bidding a definite
farewell to the village and settling in Vienna. The
astonished priest, full of misgivings, shook his head
and tried to recall his friends to reason. Mme. Liszt,
whose dearest memories were now bound to the humble
village, felt her tears gathering. But the superintend-
ent was living in the exaltation of his recovered youth
and would allow nothing to mar his happiness. As
for Franz, he recalled that phrase of Goethe's from
which the mist had suddenly lifted: "In seeing what
is difficult performed with ease, we begin to think of
the impossible."

So the Liszts established themselves in Vienna to-
wards the close of this year, 1820. Their first visit
was to the illustrious composer and pianist Charles
Czerny in order to obtain lessons. M. Liszt was ex-
pecting his son to sit down at the piano and play Reis's

12 FRANZ LISZT

Concerto; but Franz, who had found at last a master
who shared his worship of Beethoven, attacked the
Sonata in A-flat. Czerny's surprise was as profound as
the paternal vanity could have desired, but, as he was a
cautious man, he did not exclaim or use any such ex-
pressions as genius or prodigy. When the boy had
finished, however, he said solemnly: "You may become
a greater pianist than any of us." The father then
described to him the concert at Presbourg and Czerny
offered to give him lessons at the moderate price of a
gulden an hour. At the twelfth lesson, as M. Liszt
was taking out his goldpiece, the professor cried : "No,
no, the child's progress in so short a time has gener-
ously repaid my trouble."

Every evening Franz went to see his master who
found it a joy to make Putzi (as he called him) prac-
tise, and often the lessons lasted for two or three
hours. But things did not always go well. Able as
he was to read anything at sight, Putzi grew impatient
. over the minutiae that were his master's passion. But
Czerny was an admirable monitor and showed him-
self inflexible; nothing that concerned execution was
detail for him. Sometimes, weary of a passage that
he had to begin again for the twentieth time, Putzi
wept and stamped. But Czerny went tranquilly to
the window, lighted his long pipe, and came back, and \
his finger once again pointed out the detested measures
on the score. Franz did not need to be taught as an
artist a thing that cannot be taught; it was the hum-
bler duty of shaping that prodigious little hand to
the impossible. It was for the sake of the soul that
Czerny was implacable.

FRANZ LISZT 13

In addition to Czerny, the child needed a master
of composition and harmony. They chose Antonio
Salieri, the last teacher of Beethoven. This nervous
and enthusiastic old Italian taught him to read instru-
mental music and operatic scores, and trained him in
those variations on a given theme for which he had
already showed so brilliant an aptitude. After a few
months he was so far advanced that one of his ara-
besques was included in an album that an editor was
devoting to Diabelli's waltzes.

For a year and a half little Franz worked unre-
mittingly under the direction of his masters and his
father. Then the time seemed to have arrived for
him to appear before the public of the capital. A first
Concert took place in December, 1822, at which Franz
played Hummel's Concerto in A-minor and a fantasia
of his own on the andante movement in Beethoven's
^Symphony in C-minor. So great was his success that
>the next morning a critic exclaimed in his paper, "Est
'deus in nobis." But the boy paid scant attention to his
^success. He was consumed with one desire, to know
Beethoven. He recalled the stormy face hung above
the piano in the salon at Raiding. He thought of the
famous rehearsal of Fidelio at which, a few weeks
jbefore, the great deaf composer had fought with the
^orchestra before giving up the struggle and then fled
W the arm of his friend Schindler. "That is the only
man," he said to himself, "by whom I wish to be
heard." They knew Schindler, the intimate friend of
the master, and he promised to take the two Liszts
to see Beethoven so that they might invite him to
Franz's next concert.

14 FRANZ LISZT

Vienna at this time had gone mad over Italian music.
Rossini had captured the town, the theatres and the
court, and nothing was played anywhere but the Festal
and the Barber. Beethoven was neglected and for-
gotten. Poor, exiled because of his deafness, more
and more morose, he was meditating in his poverty-
stricken home on the Ninth Symphony.

When Schindler appeared, followed by little Liszt,
the solitary old monarch did not receive them cordially.
Everything he had read in the papers about the child-
prodigy had been at once suspect to the man who
was irritated by the mere words "brilliant" and
"virtuoso." He would not allow Franz to play for
him and refused to promise to be present at the con-
cert. So what a surprise it was for the Liszts, when
on the evening of the I3th of April, among the four
thousand auditors of the Redoutensaal, Beethoven
made his entrance. Franz, trembling for the first
time, looked at the master, seated not far away, whose
motionless eyes were fixed upon him. He attacked
Hummel's Concerto, then a fantasia of his own com-
position. Hardly had he finished, amid the enthusias-
tic shouts of the Viennese, when Beethoven hurried
to the stage, grasped the child and kissed him on the
forehead.

This consecration was dearer to him than the hymns
to his growing glory sung the next day in the news-
papers. But the prodigious success of this concert had
still other results. In fact, the receipts had been large
enough for Adam Liszt to think of leaving Vienna,
The Paris Conservatory alone could now furnish the

FRANZ LISZT 15

final technical instruction of his child. Both father
and son were thinking of only one thing, creation.
Virtuosity no longer seemed to them anything but
the first stage on the road of the masters.

Ill

ON December nth of this year, 1823, they arrived
in Paris. The very next day Franz and his father
made their way to the Conservatory of Music which
was directed by Cherubini. "Here," said the child,
"is the seat of the mysterious tribunal that consecrates
or condemns" ; it would not have taken much to make
him fall on his knees. Rarely have two human beings
felt more ill at ease than the Liszts, when the door-
keeper ushered them into the director's office. As if
he were in the presence of some powerful Hungarian
noble, Franz was on the point of hastening to the all-
powerful hand and kissing it. But an icy glance
stopped him short. When he had heard their request,
one dry phrase fell from the lips of Cherubini, "The
regulations." The regulations forbade any foreigner
to enter the sacred precincts. The Liszts looked at
each other overwhelmed. Franz began to sob. His
father begged and argued, and held out a letter from
Prince Metternich. "Impossible," repeated the Ital-
ian, "you are not French." It became clear that they
must give up all hope and that the long journey had
been undertaken in vain.

They would get along, then, without the official
stamp and henceforth trust to genius alone. Fortu-
nately, M. Liszt had provided himself with introduc-
tions. Several salons opened to them. When he had
been in Paris only a few weeks, Franz played in the

16

FRANZ LISZT 17

house of the Duchess de Berry, then before the Due
d'Orleans, and "little Liszt" enjoyed even more in-
credible triumphs than in Vienna. Fortune smiled on
them : two thousand francs from a private concert; even
more when the Crown Prince graciously loaned them
the Italian opera-house where Pasta, Stendhal's friend,
took part in their concert. Every day there was some
fashionable assembly at which he had to play his own
little compositions, improvise, do a thousand things at
the piano, and the child found some means of keeping
himself continually fresh. Among the many new
friends, he was especially attached to the Erard family
and the composer Ferdinand Paer, a former leader of
the imperial orchestra, who taught him French. The
child learned with ease, thanks to a very retentive mem-
ory, so well, in fact, that in the spring of 1824 Paer
took it into his head to have him write the music for a
light opera. He sketched the libretto himself in collab-
oration with the mediocre poet, Theaulon, and M. de
Ranee. It was to be called Don Sancho, or the Castle
of Love. This was the sort of thing they proposed to
a child under thirteen who was learning about life in
the drawing-rooms, growing like an asparagus-stalk
and playing with a polichinelle which the future Louis-
Philippe had given him.

M. Erard had an important branch of his piano-
factory in London. Having to go there himself in
May, he suggested taking the Liszts with him. Mme.
Liszt, who was fatigued by this continual travelling,
decided to return to her sister at Gratz and await
there the end of this trip which was to close with a
visit to the principal cities of the French provinces.

18 FRANZ LISZT

It was a painful separation, the first sorrow that really
touched his heart. But already Franz belonged very
little to himself. This is why one moment of the day
became particularly dear to him, the moment at which,
every morning, he went to mass. A happy withdrawal,
shut away amid the soft, sweet notes of the organ, a
little oasis of tenderness.

London gave the child the same reception as Paris,
and King George IV, the old friend of Brummel, sum-
moned him to Windsor. "I have never heard any-
thing to equal it," he said, caressing the child's curls,
"not only in perfection of playing but in richness of
ideas. This boy surpasses Cramer and Moscheles."
And the fat, aging king had the air of knowing whereof
he spoke. As for Franz, he was now dreaming of noth-
ing but his opera and he sang for the great ladies of
this court of another age the childish recitatives of his
Castle of Love. During the summer they returned to
Paris to work on Don Sancho, which by the middle of
the next winter was two-thirds finished. Tours through
the provinces interrupted it again. At last the final
organ-point had been placed and they were preparing
to leave for the country when, in July of this year,
1825, Adam Liszt found on the trunk that he had al-
ready locked a communication from the Minister of
Fine Arts. It stipulated that Don Sancho should be
submitted to the jury in eight days. In spite of this
haste, everything was ready on time and the piece was
received with congratulations.

"Putzi," wrote M. Liszt to Czerny, "Putzi has only
one passion, for composing. His sonata for four
hands, his trio, his quintette, should please you. Every

FRANZ LISZT 19

day he spends two hours in exercises, one hour in read-
ing at sight, and all the rest of his time is consecrated
to composition. He has grown almost as tall as I am."

On October I7th, Don Sancho was presented for the
first time at the National Academy of Music, that is to
say, at the Grand Opera. The hall was crowded and
the friends, connoisseurs and patrons promised a mas-
terpiece. From behind the scenes, the amazed Franz
watched the transparent walls of the "Castle" and its
youthful occupants, while Mile. Grassari and Adolphe
Nourrit, the two principal soloists, came and went a
little nervously. The curtain rose on a chorus of peas-
ants; Don Sancho appeared and sang his love for El-
zire, his doubts, his jealousy. . . .

The piece was a disappointment. It did not occur
to anyone, until too late, that a child of fourteen could
not illustrate very sincerely the passionate nonsense of
a pastoral by Florian. It was, however, a succes d'es-
time for the "little budding Mozart," who was the
first to realize that his abilities had been abused. As a
counterstroke, he published early in 1826 his Studies
in Twelve Exercises, a mine of new ideas, strong and
flowing under their classical form, and a work that was
to bring him wealth for many years. At the same time
his father took him to see Antoine Reicha, his fellow-
countryman, a professor at the Conservatory, who gave
him his final lessons in counterpoint.

But in spite of his industry and the new development
of his talent, in spite of the pecuniary success of a tour
in the provinces and in Switzerland, Franz's mood
became more and more sombre. A great nervous
exhaustion followed this overwork and, along with it,

20 FRANZ LISZT

an imperative need of solitude. Of reading also. He
had just finished the Odes of Victor Hugo and the
Trappiste of Vigny. It was his firm belief that an
artist has a mission to fulfill, but did not his own ex-
perience prove that the virtuoso is primarily only a
public entertainer? He who had seen Beethoven shut
away in his deafness and poverty was quite aware that
the crowd did not come to his concerts, where he ap-
peared as the child-prodigy, to find either thought or
art, but merely to stimulate their nerves. The idea of
the performing dog became insupportable to him. But
among the artists themselves was there not often a
lack of faith? Even of sincerity?

One experiment he made troubled him a great deal.
While he was speaking of Beethoven with a number of
musicians, one of them, a well-known violinist who said
he was a great admirer of the master, brought up the
subject of one of the Sonatas. Franz sat down at the
piano, as if he were going to play it, but instead played
one of his own works. The artist was completely de-
ceived and was lost in admiration. This experience
filled Liszt's heart with bitter astonishment. And then
he heard every day, on all sides, anecdotes of the most
flagrant commercialism. Now the growing boy felt for
his art a religious devotion. Nowhere but in the church
could he find an exaltation comparable to what it gave
him. And he could only prolong this state of grace, in
which he bathed his growing soul, by reading the Imita-
tion and the Fathers of the Desert. At these times
his mystical impulses became so strong that one day,
in the midst of doubt and indecision, an entirely new
ideal budded in his mind, the thought of taking orders*

FRANZ LISZT 21

He opened his heart to his father. Never, in all the six
years since he had embarked with his son on their mar-
vellous adventure, had M. Liszt been so thunderstruck.
"You belong to art, not to the Church," he answered,
and this logical man removed every religious book from
Franz's room. But the latter bought them again
secretly and read them at night. A new state of ex-
haustion, increased by ascetic exercises.

Morning and evening Franz went to church ; he re-
mained long on his knees and fasted several times a
week. He even had hallucinations in which he saw his
patron saint, Francis de Paul, standing on the ocean
waves, his outspread mantle at his feet, holding in one
hand a burning coal, the other raised to exorcise the
storm or to bless the sailors in distress, while his eyes
turned towards heaven where in a glory shone the
word, Charitas. One afternoon he lost consciousness,
and his father found him lying crumpled on the draw-
ing-room floor beside the piano. This time the doctor
interposed decisively; and, as summer with its enervat-
ing heat had begun, it was decided that he should go
to Boulogne-sur-Mer for a complete rest.

Franz's health at once improved; his color and gaiety
returned. On the other hand, M. Liszt fell seriously
ill of gastric fever, and after a very few days his life
was despaired of. The young lad, at his wit's end,
notified his friends, the Erards, and then spent every
moment at the bedside of the dying man. He re-
proached himself bitterly. It seemed to him that lately
his inner life had separated him from the one to whom
he owed everything. Was it possible that religion
separated you from those you loved best? In a mo-

22 FRANZ LISZT

ment of respite from his sufferings, Adam Liszt spoke
of his wife, his fatherland. Then he said to his son,
"My child, I am going to leave you very much alone,
but your talent will protect you against every misfor-
tune. You have a good heart and no lack of intelli-
gence. Nevertheless, I dread women on your account ;
they will trouble and dominate your life." With these
words M. Liszt died. It was the 28th of August, 1827.
He was buried at Boulogne.

On his return to Paris, where he went to await his
mother, Franz set out to see his confessor. He told
him of his father's last words and asked to have the
sixth and ninth commandments explained to him. This
tall, slender lad of sixteen was afraid that he might
have transgressed them unawares*

IV

MME. LISZT arrived in September. In order that
he might not have to draw upon the small sum which
he had saved, Franz sold his concert-piano at a loss.
He furnished in a very simple way an apartment at
7-bis rue Montholon, and set to work giving lessons.
So great was his reputation that he found his time taken
from half-past eight in the morning to ten at night.

One day he was summoned to the mansion of the
Count de Saint-Cricq, Minister of Commerce and
Manufactures in the Martignac cabinet. Mme. de
Saint-Cricq, who was an invalid, received him stretched
out in her chaise-longue, and began to talk to him about
her daughter's musical education which she proposed
to confide to him. Caroline entered. She was a slender
brunette of seventeen with wistful, violet eyes. These
two artless children looked at each other with interest.

For the first lesson, Franz arrived curled and prinked
like a dandy in his close-fitting, blue frock-coat, with
his large Byronic collar, floating tie and buff-colored
waistcoat of Kerseymere cloth. Caroline listened pen-
sively, showed him what she knew, set to work, and
the young master played for her one of Auber's bar-
carolles and Czerny's variations on the Pirate. After
the second lesson they talked of literature and the thea-
tre. The hour was prolonged by a quarter, then by a
half, soon they no longer looked at the clock. Liszt
arrived with mathematical precision, but his ardor kept

23

24 FRANZ LISZT

him there far longer than he had planned while other
pupils waited in vain at home. Caroline never gave it
a thought. She always had some book in her hand,
and with a voice so soft that it could hardly be heard
she read aloud the little collection of poems that she
had jotted down in her hours of solitude :

ff ll est une heure de silence
Qu la solitude est sans voix f
Ou tout dort, meme I'esperance,
Ou. nul zephyr ne se balance
Sous I'ombre immobile des bois"

The narrow head of the musician, with its long locks,
bent over the violet eyes and childish mouth while he
listened to this other music, more thrilling than his own.
Then he carried the book away with him, took it up
again at night, and wondered why the young girl never
read him the passages that were most heavily under-
lined. He repeated them over to himself, improvising
melodies to the words :

"Ma voix murmurait tout bas a son oreille

Des soupires, des accords

Aussi purs que I'extase QU son regard me plonge,
Aussi doux que le son que nous apporte un songe
Des ineffable bords"

Was it not for him that these words had been assem-
bled by the poet, for him that Caroline had underlined
them? Such enthusiasm filled him that the moment
he awoke he dashed off to the Hotel Saint-Cricq, cross-
ing the Seine and saluting joyfully the misty towers of

FRANZ LISZT 25

Notre-Dame. But suddenly he stopped, much per-
plexed as he considered how odd would appear his pre-
text of returning a book at eight o'clock in the morn-
ing. So he contented himself with blowing a kiss
towards the precious street. Sometimes he ventured
as far as beneath her window, thought he saw the cur-
tain stir, glutted his heart on the sight of the stones and
casements of the house. Why did she not feel the
presence so close of the friend who was transfixed
with tenderness before the creamery or the print-shop?
He went away, ready to die because she had not divined
his presence. Feverishly and indifferently he hurried
through his lessons. At twilight Mme. Liszt wrapped
a silk scarf about the head of the tall, slender boy, and
he dashed off again to his happiness.

When her illness permitted, the Countess de Saint-
Cricq attended the music-lessons, and her silent pres-
ence in no way disturbed the two students. She felt the
reciprocal passion that was being born in them, saw it
developing, filling them, and listened wistfully to their
artless confidences. Knowing that she was too seri-
ously ill ever to recover and believing from certain
signs that she had not much longer to live, Mme. de
Saint-Cricq thought she had better speak to her hus-
band. Although the children were too young to think
of marriage for many years, her own heart had dis-
cerned in theirs the secret ability to wait for a long
time. But His Excellency did not even shrug his shoul-
ders over the question of this absurd little musician. A
minister of Charles X could not trouble himself with
gutter-cats. "If they love each other," said his wife,
"they are not aware of it. At least do not prevent

26 FRANZ LISZT

them from being happy." The count smiled at his
romantic consort, and they did not speak of it again.

Soon after, her illness took a turn for the worse and
she could no longer leave her bed. One afternoon,
when Franz arrived, he learned that she had died dur-
ing the night. It seemed to him that his own happi-
ness had just died also, and he collapsed in a chair in
the drawing-room. The deep silence of the house was
broken only by his stifled sobs and murmurs. Then the
door opened and Caroline came in, white as wax.
They looked at each other, she saw his handsome face
bathed in tears, and for the first time their arms were
about each other, their lips met.

From this time forward, the visits of the beloved
took place every day. The piano remained closed, and
now it was Caroline who gave the lessons, for, next to
love, this is perhaps what women prefer most of all.
Literature, history, poetry what heroisms to review,
what apples for this Adam and Eve to nibble I Their
simplicity made them joyous in spite of their grief.
They made love through Dante, Lamartine, Victor
Hugo. The piano was reopened for a moment, then
for whole evenings, and Franz related the story of
Beethoven and Lenore.

One day he brought a ring on which he had had en-
graved this motto : Expectans expectavi. That evening
their souls reached the perfect union.

As Franz was about to leave, a footman entered the
drawing-room to summon him before the Count.

"Monsieur," said the latter, "I owe you many thanks
for the lessons you have so conscientiously given my
daughter. Nevertheless, they can no longer continue.

FRANZ LISZT 27

Before her death, the Countess informed me of your
inclination for Mile. Caroline, and no doubt I did
wrong to smile at a project which you must realize quite
as well as I to be utterly impossible. Your heart
and your intuition make it unnecessary for me to dwell
on this. Moreover, you must know that my daughter
is very soon to marry the Count d'Artigau whom I
have chosen for her. Monsieur Liszt, farewell. You
take with you my gratitude and my esteem."

Franz did not stagger. He went out without a
word, without once turning back, not suspecting that
there are sorrows from which the soul does not re-
cover. And he never returned.

THAT very night he called upon his confessor, the
Abbe Bardin. The tall young man, trembling with
wounded pride, flung himself at the priest's knees and
once more begged him to let him enter a religious
order.

But the Abbe Bardin was not merely a connoisseur
of souls; he was also a lover of music, and he believed
that once he had conquered his despair young Liszt
would find in his art a consolation that would be better
suited to his temperament.

"Come, my child," he said, lifting him up, "you
must serve God and the Church in your profession as
an artist without aspiring incontinently to the sublime
virtues of the priesthood."

Mme. Liszt shed more tears over her son, but she
also fought with all her persuasive tenderness against
his renouncing the world. There was a dramatic strug-
gle when they learned that Mile, de Saint-Cricq had
been dangerously ill anfd, having barely recovered, was
talking of taking the veil. This struggle was pro-
longed for many days, during which Christian Urhan,
the first violin at the Opera, was the only friend whose
seraphic presence Franz could endure.

Urhan loved God almost as much as he did Mozart
and Gliick. He was a round-shouldered little man who
fasted every day till six o'clock, then dined at the Cafe
des Anglais and, by special permission of the Arch-

28

FRANZ LISZT 29

bishop of Paris, took his seat every evening as first
violin at the Opera, turning his back on the stage so
that his eyes at least might be averted from evil. Like
Fra Angelico painting in his cell, Urban, when he
played, placed his soul on its knees. This virtuoso of
the second rank made his mark by a style that sprang
from the very depths of his faith, and it was because
he recognized in young Liszt an inner tendency of the
same quality that he came in the afternoon to keep
him company. But Franz remained without any real
consolation and grew thinner and thinner. His weak-
ness increased to such a degree that he was soon obliged
to give up all his pupils and lie down upon his bed,
where he spent many weeks with the shutters closed.
It was difficult to get a word from him, and the doctor
seemed to lose all hope of curing this languor. It
lasted more than eighteen months, and word went
abroad that he was dead. The Etoile printed an obit-
uary article.

Later, Urban brought with him his viola d' amour,
his favorite instrument and one that was more exqui-
sitely adapted than any other to this romantic organiza-
tion. One day they read together the Invitation to the
Waltz, a marvellous novelty, and a first rose for
the convalescent. The prostration was disappearing
slowly, giving place to a new and more violent religious
crisis. Taller, very pale, Liszt turned his first steps
towards the Church of Saint Vincent de Paul, where
he threw himself down in prayer. He resumed his old
habit of going to mass every day and became absorbed
in observing the strictest practices of the Church of
Rome. The image of a woman, pure as the alabaster

30 FRANZ LISZT

of the sacred vases, was the sacrifice that he offered
with tears to his God. "The terrestrial life," he said
to his mother, a is only a malady of the soul, an excite-
ment kept up by the passions. The natural state of
the soul is quietude."

Then came poverty to drive him out of himself. He
had to begin again giving a few lessons ; but, as he was
still too depressed to enter whole-heartedly into his
work, he varied his hours of teaching with reading.
Rene and the Genie du Christianisme became his favor-
ite books. In Rene especially, which he knew entirely
by heart, he found mystic pasturage and a cultivated
sadness. Like all those who take a passionate pleasure
in reading, he went through an intellectual debauch
that closely copied the disorder of his sensations. Pas-
cal, Hugo, Montaigne, Kant, Lamennais, Constant and
Senancour were the salads that aroused his appetite
without appeasing his hunger. Once more he forgot
his pupils in the little dining-room while, leaning at the
window, this young man of nineteen dreamed of the
loves of Adolphe and feleonore and watched the women
passing in the rue de Provence into which he had just
moved.

It was summer. The convalescent stretched his long
body, clenched his hands, which had become eager
again, and scented something electric, something fever-
ish beneath the roar of the city crowds that made him
whinny like a horse on the plains of Hungary at the
approach of a storm. Closing the window impatiently,
he returned to the piano and amused himself in working
out some rhythms to these verses by the young Hugo :

FRANZ LISZT 31

"Reste a la pauvrete, reste a la solitude*
Et ne te fais etude que de teternite"

But eternity could not delight him forever. At
twenty the past is still so brief that one cannot help liv-
ing entirely in the future. Franz's past stretched away
into a mist of music, Viennese waltzes, glorified
coaches heaped with crowns of foliage. Then came
that great French affliction which consecrated him as a
child of Paris, and of his century also. It was called
Romanticism, a word that rings like a programme for
the heart.

For several days past, in this torrid July weather,
cries had been heard of "Down with Polignac, long
live the Charter I" Liszt jotted down on paper a march
that he wished to dedicate to the ruling heroes, Hugo,
Lamennais, Lamartine and Benjamin Constant. On
July 27, just after noon, he was drawn to his attic win-
dow by the noise of the crowd running in the direction
of the Rue de Richelieu. A little later, the tri-colored
flags went by. Towards evening he heard the crack-
ling rifle-shots of the first of the "Three Glorious
Days." The Revolution had started and the Republi-
cans held the Hotel de Ville. The next day, the 28th,
the tocsin sounded from Notre-Dame, and as soon as it
was dawn the heavy roar of cannon shook the city.
Transported with enthusiasm, Franz, for the first time
in many months, sat down at the piano in a furore of
improvisation and made a rough sketch of a Revolu-
tionary Symphony dedicated to Lafayette.

Urhan arrived, anxious, full of alarming news, fear-
ing the worst for his young friend.

32 FRANZ LISZT

"How is our patient?" he asked Mme. Liszt, who
opened the door to him.

She motioned to him to be silent. Seated on his
big Plutarch, completely absorbed, Franz was playing,
and for a long time they listened, standing there in the
corridor. Mme. Liszt said in a low voice : "It was the
guns that cured him."

This long apathy of the spirit was now followed by
a period of feverish activity. A political and philo-
sophical crisis. Felicien David, the composer, took
him to see Saint-Simon, the new prophet, from whom
he learned that "the flesh, unjustly anathematized in
the Middle Ages, ought to be rehabilitated, that the
material welfare of men ought to be assured, and finally
that the condition of the poorest and most unfortunate
class should be ameliorated." It was made clear to
him that liberty counted for no more in a physical and
moral universe that was regulated by mathematical
laws than it did in a social universe that was ruled by
the law of fate. The new religion claimed to "unite
the flesh and the spirit and sanctify the one by the
other." This doctrine was glorified by David in the
publication of his "Menilmontant, Religious Songs by
Felicien David, Apostle, with Words by Bergier, Jour-
neyman Bricklayer." But soon afterwards the temple
of Menilmontant was closed and the apostles carried
their wisdom into foreign lands.

For Liszt there remained the memory of his enthu-
siasm and the idea of "woman the redemptress." He
attacked the problems that were aroused in his mind
at the thought of art as no longer merely art, art for
its own sake, but as something also social and utilita-

FRANZ LISZT 33

rian. M. d'Ortigue, editor of ths.Quotidienne, and a
member of the coterie grouped about still another mas-
ter, the Abbe de Lamennais, read him a page of his
novel in which he was .developing the master's doc-
trines. "There exist eager spirits tormented by the
need to love something and believe in it. For these
art is a religion. The tefnf art must be accepted here
in its widest meaning so as to include every manifesta-
tion of human thought, every expression of man under
whatever form it appears. These spirits have faith
in art, individual faith, faith that is without logic or
a rational basis, but a faith that is instinctively sincere,
almost involuntary, and the first of the conditions under
which genius reveals itself." There was as much dis-
cussion over the words of Lamennais, which Liszt re-
peated on every occasion : "The regeneration of art is
a social regeneration."

It was in the midst of this phase that, on March 9,
1832, Paganini gave his first concert in Paris in the
grand hall of the Opera. Liszt went to hear him and
studied with passionate interest the face of the Italian
of whom it was said that he was an incarnation of the
devil. Never had any virtuoso made so vivid an im-
pression on him. His prodigious technique, in the serv-
ice of an unapproachable soul that was almost isolated
from men, thrilled him with sensuous delight and an-
guish. It became clear to him that his art was still
in its infancy and that he would have to learn every-
thing over again in order to reach those heights where
everything seems possible. Nevertheless, supernat-
ural as the violinist appeared, something essential was
lacking in him : the faculty of dying to himself so as to

34 FRANZ LISZT

give himself to others. "A monstrous ego," thought
Liszt, "could never be anything but a sad and solitary
God." He perceived that all greatness that does not
communicate its sorrow fails to deliver itself; that form
proclaims itself in vain, it is nothing unless the soul
speaks. He knew that the world would never hear an-
other Paganini. But perhaps he also thought that
there would never be another Liszt. He sought to for-
mulate all these tendencies, so obscure and yet so clear,
and he found this phrase which became his motto:
Genie oblige.

To Franz Wolf, one of his first pupils, he wrote,
"My mind and my fingers are working like two lost
souls : Homer, the Bible, Plato, Locke, Byron, Hugo,
Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Bach, Hummel,
Mozart, Weber, are all about me. I study them, medi-
tate on them, devour them furiously. In addition, I
work four or five hours at exercises (thirds, sixths,
octaves, tremolos, repeated notes, cadenzas, etc.).
Ah, if only I don't go mad you will find me an artist.
Yes, the kind of artist you ask for, the kind of artist
that is needed today. 'I too am a painter T exclaimed
Michael Angelo, the first time he saw a masterpiece.
. . . Though small and poor, your friend has never
ceased to repeat those words of that great man since
Paganini's last concert."

After two years of eclipse, he suddenly decided to
reappear before the public. He announced that he
would play the Sonatas and Concertos of Beethoven,
which called forth the criticism that his programmes
were "badly chosen." Beethoven had just died. The
connoisseurs were pronouncing him a barbarian.

FRANZ LISZT 35

Cherubini said, "He makes me sneeze." But Liszt
insisted upon his favorite music without regard to fash-
ion or success, well assured that the artist's mission
is to serve his gods. Once more he felt the volcano
in himself. Berlioz called it "heart-quakes without an
eruption." There were three concerts, in immediate
succession.

One day, as he was out walking, he met his friend
D'Ortique in company with a priest. It was the Abbe
de Lamennais. Franz might have been struck by a
thunderbolt. His whole soul rose to his lips, and in
how different a fashion than before the Abbe Bardin!
Oh, how small and inexperienced he felt before him !
Here was the man who "broke but did not bend," the
only one who had dared to take issue with Rome,
whose love of truth perhaps surpassed his love of God.
So strong was the attraction felt by Liszt that he at
once chose this lucid, revolutionary head as the general
of his conscience. Lamennais, a great lover of music,
had just had the idea of a De Profundis in which the
plain-chant should be united to the faux-bourdon, and
he at once spoke of it to the young man at his elbow,
inviting him to La Chenaie. Liszt accepted with ardor
and set off one day for that "oasis in the desert of Brit-
tany" where, in front of the chateau, a spacious garden
stretched away, divided by a terrace planted with lin-
dens and with a tiny chapel at the bottom.

Franz became deeply attached to this great, vehe-
ment spirit. He learned from him that the work of
the rarest artists is their lives. He learned the phi-
losophy of music, the priestess of the art; he learned
that, like the sentinels of the Lord, he must henceforth

36 FRANZ LISZT

watch, pray and strive, day and night. Was not the
Eternal Geometrician the greatest virtuoso, since his
work was the world? Thence it followed that the laws
of creation were the same as those of art and that
beauty was identical with life. To know and to under-
stand the work of God was the object of science; to
render it in its material or sensible aspects was the
object of art. "Art for art's sake is an absurdity.
The perfecting of the creature whose progress it mani-
fests is its aim." But its roots did not strike down
merely into the powers of men; it was united to God
through love. Art was therefore never either hap-
hazard or disorderly; its real discipline was poetry, its
method excellence. It had no limitations, since it was
the very thing that God had most deliberately left un-
limited: a progression, a development The highest
duty of the artist was to furnish the divinity with modes
of expression that were perpetually new.

It was an important visit, followed, in Franz, by an
advance along the road of inner development, of which
the death of his father and his renunciation of Caroline
de Saint-Cricq had marked the first stages.

The second shock he received this same winter from
Berlioz's Symphonic Fantastique. He had already
been to see Berlioz, two years before, at his home, and
they had spoken of Goethe's Faust, which Liszt did
not know and which he at once hastened to get. It
chanced to be the very evening of the concert at which
Habeneck led the Fantastique for the first time. The
effect was overwhelming. Liszt applauded until he
could do so no longer and led the new hero away by
force to dine in his lodgings in the rue de Provence.

FRANZ LISZT 37

Shortly afterward, Berlioz left for the Villa Medici,
from which he was now returning, boiling over with
passion, his pockets full of manuscripts. On December
9, at the Conservatory, they heard the Episode from
the Life of an Artist and the Return to Life, in which
he had given passionate vent to his love for Henrietta
Smithson. The musical expression returned to this un-
ceasingly in the score under the form of an endlessly
modulated "fixed idea." It was the first expression of
the leitmotiv: pictures of an astonishing clearness,
which in their coloration recalled the canvases of Dela-
croix. For Liszt it was a revelation of descriptive
music, of the symbolical relationship that exists between
the arts, and he discerned how Bach had composed his
Caprice on the Departure of His Beloved Brother,
how Beethoven had written his Pastoral, how he him-
self might reach the point where he could catch and
transcribe the rapture and grief that were present to-
gether in his soul.

The third and last of these shocks came to him from
a young artist, unknown and ill, who was making his
debut in Paris under the auspices of Pleyel: Chopin.
When this frail aristocrat sat down at the piano, Liszt
realized that once more he was in the presence of a
talent that would reveal his own possibilities to him-
self. Captivated from the first notes, Franz listened
to this soul, which was so reserved, so modest and of so
extraordinarily precious a quality. He loved him at
once with his usual spontanous ardor. There are na-
tures that are rich through exuberance, others that are
rich through exclusiveness. Chopin belonged to the
latter class. His personality was too pleasing to allow

38 FRANZ LISZT

one time for reflection. His very appearance was like
a convolvulus, swaying on a stem of incredible delicacy,
his colored petals of so aerial a tissue that it seemed
as if the least touch would destroy him. And Chopin,
who dreaded unintelligent applause far more than not
being applauded at all, appreciated the full value of
this admiration. They offered each other their friend-
ship. Chopin carne to the rue de Provence, where he
met Victor Hugo; Liszt went to the Chausee d'Antin,
where he saw the Princess Potocka; and if Franz, on
his side, loved the Pole's Etudes, the latter declared
that he wished he could steal his manner of playing
them. He even dedicated them to Liszt.

All that Liszt had learned from Paganini in the
technical sphere he now learned from this new friend
in the sphere of the inner life. It was an experience
of equal depth and importance. And the poet's famous
mbato was the first real caress of a woman that the
tall, innocent pianist had received. "If one could im-
agine," wrote Schumann, "an ^Eolian harp with the
whole scale of sounds, and an artist's hand scattering
these sounds, pell-mell, into all sorts of fantastic ara-
besques, in such a way that one always heard one funda-
mental bass voice and one delicate, high, sustained note
one would have an image that somewhat resembled
this playing of Chopin's."

The latter quickly created about him a fastidious
atmosphere, chose his relationships and formed for
himself a very small circle among his compatriots and
a few unusual French men and women. He feared the
complications and excitements of a social existence;
he feared especially the crumbling of his own sensibil-

FRANZ LISZT 39

ity. He was planning to give a housewarming, now
that his lodgings were ready, but he never quite got to
the point, always deciding that some indispensable ac-
cessory was still lacking. It was certainly not flowers,
for these were always there in profusion the year round.

Several of his friends decided, one evening, to impose
on him without further delay the joys of a surprise-
party. Franz organized it. They looted a grocery in
the quarter and arrived, a dozen strong, each one
carrying his package. The apartment was dark, but
the master of the house, with his kindly, languid grace,
hastened to light some additional candles. They gob-
bled up this improvised midnight feast, drank several
bottles, and then all eyes turned towards Chopin. He
went to the piano, near which, on a small table, stood a
single portrait, that of Liszt. He opened the Pleyel,
sat down, placed his hands on the keyboard.

The company consisted of Heinrich Heine, the
singer Adolphe Nourrit, Hiller, Meyerbeer, the poet
Mickiewicz, George Sand, Eugene Delacroix and the
Countess d'Agoult. In the mirror tilted over the fire-
place, Liszt watched the fair curls and lovely oval face
of this young woman whose acquaintance he had just
made. Thanks to the mirror, he saw them in two
ways.

VI

MARIE D'AGOULT had just entered upon her twenty-
eighth year. She was the daughter of the Count de
Flavigny, a hot-tempered personage of the highest rank
who, during the emigration, had married at Frankf ort-
on-the-Main a young widow, born a von Bethmann, a
member of one of the most powerful banking families
of old Germany. Brought up partly in Frankfort, partly
in the manor-house of Mortier, in Touraine, Catholic
on her father's side and Protestant on her mother's,
Marie de Flavigny had never been quite sure as to the
nationality of her intelligence. While she was a Tou-
rangelle in her heart, her wit, and her clear-headed-
ness, certain roots of her sentiments and temperament
plunged down into the flower-beds of German poetry.
A foreigner in the country in which she was born, as
well as in that in which she lived, she remained always
a little strange to those who loved her and even to her-
self. Her mother and an old German nurse had fed
her on Grimm's Fairy Tales, Gellert's Fables and
Schiller's Monologues; and her father saw that she
was given lessons in mythology. She knew about the
Rape of Proserpine long before she had heard of the
Annunciation of the Virgin, and she was still ignorant
of the manger of the Infant Jesus when she was "al-
ready marvelling at the prodigious cradle of Hercules."
Her paternal grandmother, an old eighteenth-century
dame, advised her to pay a visit once a year to the Bon

40

FRANZ LISZT 41

Dieu : a good example of the polite attitude maintained
towards religion in this house of faultless good taste.

As a young girl she was taken to Paris. She at-
tended the lectures of the Abbe Gaultier, took lessons
from M. Abraham, dancing-master to the late queen,
Marie Antoinette, and crossed foils with Mile. Donna-
dieu. At the death of her father, Mile, de Flavigny
passed her period of mourning at Frankfort, where she
saw Goethe and Chateaubriand. The idea of glory
and poetry imposed themselves so powerfully upon her
mind that she acquired "an instinctive adoration, a
veritable cult of beauty that may have been Germanic
or pagan, but was certainly far from Christian, far
from French." She was taken away from this to be
plunged in the mawkish, worldly piety of the convent
of the Sacred Heart. The regimen of Scotch shower-
baths there may not have been much of a tonic for the
soul, but it made her nervous reactions all the keener.
Physically, at least, Marie had reached her perfection.
In vain had they taught her that "human nature is the
devil." When she rejoined her mother in her house
on the Place Vendome, she decided, as she looked at her-
self in the mirror, that the good sisters had somewhat
exaggerated. Tall, slender, very fair, she seemed like
some Rhenish princess, save for the French precision
of her eyebrows and her nose and the mocking curve of
her mouth. She was especially vain of her coloring.

This beauty, in addition to a large fortune, quickly
attracted suitors. But with Manfred, Werther,
Adolphe and Leone Leoni as her favorite heroes, the
idea of a marriage of convenience displeased her.
However, this was the sort of marriage she made, per-

42 FRANZ LISZT

haps with the presentiment that, in one way or another,
romance is only bought at the price of difficulty. On
May 1 6, 1827, at the Church of the Assumption, Marie
married Count Charles d'Agoult, a colonel of cavalry,
Master of the Horse to the Dauphin. He was twenty
years older than she.

The first years of the new household were peaceful
and somewhat tedious. Three children were born.
The Revolution of 1830 occupied them in a measure,
then the purchase of the Chateau de Croissy, in Brie.
The habit of entertaining the neighbors there, on
whom they inflicted readings from the poets, soon gave
the Countess the taste for a salon in Paris. With her
very cultivated mind, a certain interesting coldness
six feet of ice on top of twenty feet of lava, people
said together with her horror of the commonplace,
her seriousness and finally her handsome fortune, Mme.
d'Agoult possessed most of the qualifications for insur-
ing the success of such an undertaking. She did suc-
ceed. She became the "Corinne of the Qua! Mala-
quais," where her house stood at the corner of the rue
de la Beaune. But in spite of her popularity she still
found life tedious. In June, 1834, she went to see
Mile. Lenormant, the celebrated fortune-teller, who
received the greatest personages in her dirty office on
the rue de Tournon. "A complete change will very
soon take place in your life," the sorceress told her.
"You will even change your name because of it, and
your new name will become famous throughout Europe.
You will leave your native land for a long time. You
will love a man who will make a sensation in the world.
Beware of your imagination. It is easily aroused and

FRANZ LISZT 43

will lead you into dangers from which you will escape
only through great courage."

A friend to whom she related this interview said,
"You lack nothing now but the great man." When
Liszt entered her house, she was approaching that
period of fife when one suspects others less than one-
self. Berlioz had introduced him, but with a reserve
and a caution that seemed droll enough in such a head-
long lover as himself. Liszt was fresh from his first
successful love-affair, that with Mme. de la Prunarede,
and he imagined that when you have possessed one
woman you have obtained the secret of all the others.
Marie cTAgoult, however, stirred something in him
besides the senses curiosity, even pride; in fact he did
not quite know what. George Sand was the counsellor
of his growing passion. She seemed touched by it, as
if she divineH that there was something in this affair
that condemned all the licentiousness of the character
of Lelia, on which she was just then busily working.
The simplicity and the intensity of the young pianist
seemed to promise too quick a victory to the danger-
ously clear-sighted beauty. She therefore advised com-
mon sense: pleasure, certainly, but not love. Franz
allowed himself to be more or less convinced; he re-
strained himself for some time, and, as he was fre-
quently invited to the Hotel d'Agoult, a coldness of
several weeks won for him what he had desired from
the beginning. Beneath the coquetry of a restless
woman he divined a ferment of the mind and senses,
a revolt against everything which until now had made
her life an example of that "comme il faut" which the
French aristocracy, like the French middle class, sets

44 FRANZ LISZT

up as the first of the social dogmas. It was not merely
the lover that he incarnated but the liberator. She, in
her turn, was to become the "redemptress," for she
was to open his intelligence to a better knowledge of
itself.

Their passion was born beautiful and exacting.
They yielded to it, Franz as a novice crowned at last,
Marie dreaming of a way of proclaiming her enfran-
chisement with a certain glory. Then one of the Count-
ess's children, little Louison, fell seriously ill. They
watched over her together. Their love was chastened
again by this death-bed and grew stronger through the
grief and solitude they were sharing. When Louison
died, Marie thought she was going mad and believed
that God had brought down vengeance upon her for
her sin. Well, had she not paid for it now ? She had
never known very well how to pray, in spite of the
strong impulse to prayer in her soul. But her frank
and open heart could receive nothing of the divine ex-
cept love. Human love, difficult, full of desires.

As for Franz, he finished his Pensee des worts, which
had been begun at La Chenaie. The image of Caroline
ran through it, and he yielded himself to an alternating
memory of his voluptuous delight and his childhood.
Near the half-open window, his mother listened to him
while she worked. He came up to her, kissed her on
the forehead, and, above the flowering chestnuts,
breathed in the spring that was charged with adven-
ture.

VII

ON the evening of August 21, 1835, a post-chaise
stopped before the Hotellerie des Balances at Geneva.
Two travellers stepped down, a young woman, fair and
beautiful, whose dress was the last word in Parisian
elegance, and a tall, awkward youth whose long,
straight hair fell about a rather girlish face.

No one as yet, either in the lower or in the upper
city, knew anything about this couple of the broken
banns. But in Paris, the double abduction of Mme.
d'Agoult by Liszt and of Liszt by Mme. d'Agoult, was
already an immense scandal. The lovers set out at
once in search of lodgings and soon found them in the
rue Tabazan, at the corner of the rue des Belles-Filles,
from which there is a view over the Saleve and the
Juras. On the threshold of France, this tiny canton,
hardly visible on the map, sheltered a multitude of
faded grandeurs, fallen royalties, and, as one sees,
certain fugitive lovers. The new arrivals at once be-
gan to arrange for themselves a tender, studious life.

Every other day was consecrated to the piano, the
other to the literary work planned by Marie. Franz
registered at the Academy as a student and attended
the lectures on philosophy by Professor Choisy. In
the evening there was music. Marie would devour the
face of her hero, while the whole quarter gathered
about their windows. How beautiful to her seemed
this royal solitude she had just chosen, in the com-

45

46 FRANZ LISZT

pany of this brilliant soul, how far from the empty
circle of feelings and ideas in which she had moved un-
til then I In the midst of a piece, Franz would stop
short, so clearly did the eyes of his beloved express the
depths of her heart. They embraced each other on
the sofa, crushed each other's lips. Marie believed she
understood Franz better than she was understood by
him. She was living through every pore, and, far from
seeking self-forgetfulness, sought rather to explain her-
self. From the union of their instincts and their
thoughts was born what she called "the divine sense of
things." Passion, simple liberty to reach that sphere
where souls mingle in ineffable peace. She lamented
not merely the errors but even more the pleasures of
those who do not love. She who had always received,
discovered, for the first time, the joy of giving. For
was it not she who gave the most? How unencum-
bered was the life of this lover, except for the dutiful
affection he felt for the mother he had left. But her
renunciations, husband, children, fortune, position,
reputation, were a "dot" of some value. She regretted
nothing. When Franz was absent for a few hours she
was all the more conscious of her joy; then, suddenly
anxious, she would watch for his return. She would
take her place at the window whence she could see the
wall of the Juras behind which lay France. Nothing
drew her heart there any longer. Her new country
extended no further than the end of the street and the
Place Saint-Antoine, where the gentlemen of Geneva
bowed so ceremoniously to one another.

In the town, everybody was beginning to hear about
the young Hungarian and his striking mistress ; and,

FRANZ LISZT 47

although the aristocracy turned upon them the stoniest
of faces, a few of them, and several of the bourgeois,
sought their acquaintance. Among these were the illus-
trious botanist Pyrame de Candolle, James Fazy, the
politician, Adolphe Pictet, the scientist, Simonde de Sis-
mondi, the historian, and Alphonse Denis, geologist,
archaeologist, orientalist. One day, to the great joy of
Mme. d'Agoult, they met Prince Belgiojoso, his wife
and the Countess Potocka, three friends of Chopin.
The Genevese gentlemen came to the rue Tabazan
mostly in the evening, and more or less without the
knowledge of their families. How alive, how interest-
ing was the love-story of this romantic menage!

The Countess Marie enjoyed discussions, and with
an eloquence that was also considerate and in the best
of good taste she would hold her own against these
intellectuals who were usually more bashful than sol-
emn. She even disputed with Pictet, "the Universal,"
or the Major, as he was called, an aesthetician and
writer of real discernment who liked to be sententious.
They talked philosophy and religion. Mme. d'Agoult,
always something of a Voltairian, was upheld by Can-
dolle, but would finally give way, not so much to the
arguments of the "Universal" as to those of Franz,
which overflowed with mystic transports. Pictet's con-
clusion was that "the sins of genius carry in themselves
their own absolution." These discussions set vibrating
in Franz the chords of his "Inner harmonica," some of
which had not sounded for many years. Sismondi
talked politics. The Princess Belgiojoso spoke of
China and the Chinese, whose language she was learn-
ing. Then the prince would sing fragments from Bel-

48 FRANZ LISZT

lini and a song of Schubert's. Finally, Franz would sit
down at the piano.

It was a refreshment after the literary work of the
day. For each of them had spent hours at his table,
pen in hand. Marie, in her small, fine writing, had pol-
ished up an article on Victor Hugo for James Fazy's
paper, and Franz had made big fly-tracks across the
sheets in which he was developing the ideas that had
been aroused in him by his visit to Lamennais. He
was gathering them together in a manifesto, entitled
"Concerning the Situation of Artists." Reform, re-
form ! was his cry, and the words that came to him most
naturally were always those of priests, initiators, apos-
tles, servants of that religion of art the unacknowl-
edged rights of which he was always proclaiming.
Then he pleaded for programmes such as he had con-
ceived. Once for all he banished the platitudinous
romances, the duos, the hotch-potches that "shrivelled
your ears," and replaced them by Mozart, Beethoven,
Weber, and his friends Berlioz and Chopin. This
judicial role pleased him, and he sent his manuscripts,
one after another, to the Gazette Musicale.

One day, Marie admitted, in confusion, that their
purse was empty. From now on they would have to
be more foresighted in keeping the pot boiling,
since . . .

Since ?

The event was to take place towards the end of De-
cember.

Franz passionately seized in his arms the woman
who was promising him the most disturbing of all the
pledges of love. It occurred to them to organize a

FRANZ LISZT 49

concert with the help of Prince Belgiojoso. This
wealthy amateur suggested holding it for the benefit
of the Italian political refugees. Liszt, who had al-
ready given so much in this way, agreed with enthu-
siasm, relying on some other means of getting out of
his difficulties, and the concert took place in the pres-
ence of Jerome Bonaparte, ex-King of Westphalia, a
former minister of Charles X, and all the Genevese
patricians. Liszt was received with sympathy and ad-
miration, and the ladies considered him so handsome
that they changed the epithet "reprehensible," which
they had hitherto applied to his conduct, for that of
"original."

This seemed even more just when they learned that
the great pianist had spontaneously offered to give
the Conservatory, which had just been established, a
free course of piano lessons during the following win-
ter. In order to live, therefore, he had to return to
the old system of private lessons. This small, regular
manna would at least assure them a living. As for
the course, Liszt flung himself into it whole-heartedly,
distributing praise, blame, irony. He even kept a
class-book in which he wrote down his comments oppo-
site each name:

"Julie Raffard. Very remarkable musical feeling.
Very small hands. Brilliant execution.

"Amelie Calame. Pretty fingers, diligent and care-
ful, almost too much so. Capable of teaching.

"Marie Demellayer. Vicious method (if it can be
called a method), great zeal, mediocre temperament.
Grimaces and contortions. Glory to God in the highest
and peace to men of good will.

50 FRANZ LISZT

"Ida Milliquet. Genevese artist, flabby and medi-
ocre. Good enough appearance at the piano.

"Jenny Gambini. Fine eyes."

And peace, love, the small, tranquil circumstances
amid which he was living, stirred him to composing
once more. He sought to catch on the piano the im-
pressions of a walk along the lake, an excursion into the
Alps, the poetic coloration of which had been sug-
gested to him by Obermann's orchestration. Marie
read Shakespeare or Byron to him while he improvised.
In this way were formed one by one the first poems of
the Annees de Pelerlnage which opened with the Cloches
de G. . . . As an epigraph they chose a text from
Childe Harold:

ff l live not in myself } but I become
Portion of that around me"

While he was writing, the bells of the near-by Cathe-
dral of Saint-Pierre flooded the rooms with their sweet
chimes. He jotted down his Lac de Wallenstadt, Au
lord d'une source, the Vallee d'Obermann, Fleurs melo-
dlques des Alpes, Psaume, leaves from his first lyrical
and pictorial album.

They were happy, as one can be in certain conditions
of a precarious stability. Their very celebrity forced
them to be so. But at times even their good hours were
veiled in a complicated silence. They sought for the
cause everywhere but in their happiness. Marie found
this phrase which expressed it well enough: "I have a
friend, but my sorrow has no friend."
As for Franz, although he had at first been home-

FRANZ LISZT 51

sick he was quickly acclimatized and wrote to his
mother to send him his library, Montaigne, Bossuet,
Fenelon, Chenier and Lamartine.

On Friday, December 18, at ten in the evening, lit-
tle Blandine was born, "natural daughter of Franz
Liszt, professor of music, aged twenty-four years and
one month, and of Catherine-Adelaide Meran, lady of
independent means, aged twenty-four years (she was
thirty), born in Paris, both of them unmarried and
domiciled at Geneva." In his joy Liszt dedicated his
Cloches to the baby and hastened to the jeweler where
Catherine-Adelaide had recently ordered a seal. He
had it mounted in a ring, engraved with this motto,
adorned with a rhododendron : Inalta solitudine.

VIII

WITH the windows open to the spring, he wrote to
George Sand and invited her to join them. "For the
last six months I have done nothing but write, scrawl
and scribble notes of alt kinds and all colors. If they
were reckoned up I am sure there would be billions of
them. I have also become scandalously dumb as the
proverb says, as stupid as a musician." None the less,
the rumor spread through the musical world that Liszt
could no longer compose. Berlioz alone, having seen
his Traveller's Album, his Nocturne, his Fantasia on a
Jewess, exclaimed, "Today we have the right to ex-
pect everything from Liszt as a composer." And, as
a matter of fact, his sentimental retirement had mar-
vellously nourished his genius. That fertile slumber
which, with artists, precedes periods of fecundity, had
come to a close, and Franz overflowed with gratitude
to Marie because of it. With her the first exaltation
had been succeeded by something more perfect, dearer
to her heart in its tranquil plenitude. She would have
reproached herself for any remorse as for a weakness,
and she saw nothing but grandeur in her admiration
for her lover. They both adored their little girl,
"Franz perhaps more demonstratively. He was still
unused to it and bursting with paternal love, while she
adjusted herself more sensibly to this new maternity.
She had done a good deal of work ever since Adolphe
Pictet had drawn up for her a methodical programme

52

FRANZ LISZT 53

of reading on the history of religions. And often in
the evening, when they were alone, they remained for
long hours, their heads bent over their books. In the
main she shared Franz's republican ideals and his ideas
about art, but without that ardor which hurried him
with so much appetite towards the new. She had not
forgotten her father's lessons, and the great lady re-
mained somewhat distrustful of everything that lacked
patina. Jocelyn displeased them, Lelia delighted them.
They urged George Sand to come, but she made an ex-
cuse of her divorce and from month to month put off
her departure.

When she finally arrived, in the first days of Decem-
ber, with her two children, her papers, her pipes and
her man's clothes, Marie and Franz had already left
for Chamonix. Sand set out to find them. At the
Hotel de 1'Union she discovered their traces in the
guest-book where Liszt had registered as a musician-
philosopher, born on Parnassus, coming from the Land
of Doubt, journeying towards Truth. Sand added her
own description:

Name of the travellers : The Piffoels family.

Place of residence : Nature.

Whence come: From God.

Whither going : To Heaven.

Birthplace : Europe.

Occupation. Saunterers.

Date of their titles : From the beginning of time.

Conveyed by whom : By public opinion.

Adolphe Pictet appeared in his turn.

"Has Monsieur come to arrest them?" asked the
inn-keeper, approaching him respectfully.

54 FRANZ LISZT

"Arrest whom?"

"That family of gypsies with long hair and blouses
who make an infernal racket up there and laugh at the
king, the law and the inn-keepers. You can't hear
yourself think. All my guests are packing off."

"How many of them are there?"

"Four, five, how do I know? . . . Men, women,
they come and go, always changing. And there are two
children."

For eight days there was a fine debauch of eloquence,
George Sand, usually so taciturn, deafening everyone
with her words, Franz with his humanitarian theories,
and Major Pictet with the doctrines of the philosopher
Schelling. His celebrated aphorism, "The absolute is
identical with itself," kept them awake a whole night
in the midst of cigar smoke. George, with her tightly
fitting riding-coat, her azure cravat and her crop, made
a fair enough jockey. The "Universal," in spite
of his learning and for all his wit, used a pipe. As a
specialist in Sanscrit, he conferred on each of them
a mystical incarnation. Sand was Kamorrupi, "she
who is transformed at will"; Liszt, Madhousvara,
"the melodious one"; Arabella became Manas,
"thought." In short, a very amiable sort of Satanism
which, as George said, partook rather of the nature
of the cockchafer than of the devil. They went on ex-
cursions to the Montanvers, to the Glacier des Boissons
and to the Tete Noire. They escaped without difficulty
many "terrifying" precipices and "lugubrious" cre-
vasses. From the back of his mule Franz held forth :

"Never doubt that the future of the world exists in
everything. Of what importance are the mistakes, the

FRANZ LISZT 55

weaknesses and the dissensions of the champions of
truth 1 They are fighting today scattered and sick
from the disorder and the intolerant vanity of the cen-
tury. Lost in a frightful melee, they misunderstand
one another, flee from one another, wound one another,
instead of pressing together under the same banner.
This generation must pass and disappear like a winter
torrent. After it will come new and better disciplined
fighters, taught by our defeats, picking up our weap-
ons, scattered on the field of battle, and discovering the
magic power of the arrows of Hercules."

"Come to my arms !" cried George. "And may God
grant it ! You speak and think quite well for a musi-

cian."

The caravan arrived at Fribourg and rushed into
the cathedral to hear the famous organ built by
Mooser. Liszt climbed at once to the organ-loft and
took possession of the keyboard. He was in one of his
radiant, animated moods.

"Organ, organ, O Pope of instruments!"

His Florentine profile stood out clearly against the
woodwork. There was a prelude, then he attacked
Mozart's Dies Irae, at first very softly, through a
series of modulations on a single stop, to test the docil-
ity of the instrument. Feeling it respond, he made it
speak in several voices. Little by little the modes of
expression were multiplied and combined, and the soul
of the artist spread through all the pipes of the vast
organism.

"Quantum tremor est futurus
Quando judex est Venturus"

56 FRANZ LISZT

The adagio began, sombre and severe, in which the
modulations were combined in a series of dissonances
and unfolded like delicate masses of mist. Now and
then there emerged more distinct forms that seemed
to shine with an inner light, but they dissolved anew,
enveloped by others equally fugitive. When expecta-
tion had been raised to its greatest intensity, the pre-
lude gave place to a theme as grave and precise as a
sentence of ancient wisdom that was repeated in strict
order by successively higher voices, after the manner
of Bach's fugues. Then another phrase emerged, quick
and brilliant. It was as sparkling, vibrant and erratic
as the first motif had been simple in its monotonous
grandeur. A contest began between the two spirits.
The lighter attacked its grave adversary, trying to lure
it with its fascinations away from its austere path.
Calling to its aid the most brilliant notes of the organ,
it multiplied its caprices till the latter swelled suddenly
into cries of passion. Breast to breast they fought and
intertwined, forming an aerial Laocoon. But the
former maintained its ascendancy and forced the other
to return to its fundamental tone, and harmony was
finally reestablished by a mutual reconciliation in which
the two forces were at last blended.

Arabella listened with all her soul. Her long, fair
hair, loosened by the rain, fell over her hands. She
dreamed that the avenging angel was passing over her,
but without striking her, for she was nothing but love,
defeat and charity.

There was one matter which his friends concealed
from Liszt and of which they spoke only in whispers

FRANZ LISZT 57

among themselves, the sudden appearance of a Vien-
nese pianist of whom it was reported that no one, not
even Liszt, was the peer. His name was Thalberg,
and he was having a triumphant success in Paris and
at the same time avenging society for the affront the
Gypsy heart-breaker had inflicted on it. When Liszt
learned of this menace to his glory he imagined at first,
since it did not affect his happiness, that he was indif-
ferent to it. But Marie soon noticed that her lover's
pride was suffering. An artistic triumph presently be-
came an urgent necessity for Franz. Marie was aware
of this before he was, and, however much it cost her to
make the first break in this year of solitude, she urged
him to go. "Delight of my life," he said, as he kissed
her eyes, "it is a necessity for both of us, for you even
more than for me. I am impatient to have my love for
my Beatrice glorified in the face of the world."

But when he reached Paris, Thalberg had just left.
The duel was postponed until winter, when it was
planned that Liszt should make his reappearance at
one of Berlioz's concerts. In the meanwhile, he studied
the new composer's works, which, it was said, reduced
those of Chopin to insignificance. He found them
mediocre and thought it was not unfitting to express
this opinion in the Revue Musicals, and he maintained
that if this was the school of the future he had no
desire to join forces with it. The matter was taken
up with intense feeling on all sides; what had been a
statement of beliefs was turned into a partisan quarrel,
and people were waiting for the adversaries to appear
on the scene. Liszt, accordingly, reappeared before
the public on December 18, at the concert of his friend

58 FRANZ LISZT

Berlioz. His entry on the platform took place amid an
icy silence. This rather pleased the virtuoso, who was
never so stirred as by a formidable obstacle. He had
placed his transcriptions of the Fantastique on the pro-
gramme. Never had the artist appeared more power-
ful or more winning, and in a quarter of an hour the
hostile crowd was completely won over. As he had
wished, it was in a burst of enthusiasm that Beatrice
triumphed.

Three months later, Thalberg returned from Aus-
tria, his pride nettled in turn, and was heard at the
Theatre Italien where he had a great success. Chopin
said, "Thalberg plays excellently, but he is not the
man for me. He plays the forte and the piano with
the pedal but not with the hand, plays tenths as easily
as I do octaves and wears diamond shirt-buttons."
Liszt's response was to hire the opera-house. When
the curtain rose, he appeared so small and so slender
before the enormous hall that the entire audience was
troubled at his audacity; but at the tenth measure
the assurance of victory doubled the great waves of
pleasure in every heart. So there was a tie. The
"rubber" took place in the salons of the Princess Bel-
giojoso who was giving a concert in the interest of
some charity, and this time the two pianists appeared
together. Thalberg played his fantasia Moses, and
Liszt his Niobe. Liszt was the first to feel the vanity
of such a tournament; and, as a circle formed about
him, he remarked, "Truly, are artists necessarily ene-
mies because the one does not accord to the other a
value that seems to him exaggerated by the crowd?
Are they reconciled because, in other than artistic mat-

FRANZ LISZT 59

ters, they mutually appreciate and esteem each other?"
But the public loves to pass judgment, and it was not
satisfied until the following decision had been uttered
by a witty woman: "Thalberg is the first pianist in
the world, Liszt is the only one."

IX

MARIE had again taken up her quarters in Paris, joy-
fully, for at Geneva she had felt like a fish out of
water. She explored public opinion with her delicate
antennae, and without seeking to defy society she
gathered about her a few friends and collected the
beginnings of a circle in which there would be room
only for artists and a few privileged persons. To this
end she chose not to inaugurate a critical salon to
which the merely curious would have flocked but simply
to make use of her homely rooms at the Hotel de
France, in the Rue Lafitte. George Sand soon joined
her friends there and installed herself above them, in
the entresol. One day they would be visited by Chopin,
or Eugene Sue, Ballanche or Sainte-Beuve ; on another
it would be Lamennais, Nourrit or Heinrich Heine.
There was excellent music, and Liszt prepared there
his series of concerts. But, as happens periodically
with artists in their path of development, he was
dominated by two necessities : that of a search for the
intellectual suggestions furnished by nature, and the
refreshing plunge into some work that was foreign to
his own genius.

As for the first, George renewed her invitation to
Marie and Franz to visit her at Nohant. Beethoven
would serve for the other, as Liszt had undertaken to
transcribe the nine symphonies for the piano. A fer-
tilizing labor in which the disciple, by studying the

60

FRANZ LISZT 61

master's thought, cultivated his own, discovered and
expressed himself.

An illness delayed Marie's departure until February,
but she finally joined the good Piffoel who had given
up her own room for her, repapered the walls, put up
new curtains and hung the Countess's portrait above
her bed, the symbol of her ubiquity. Liszt remained
several weeks by himself; then Marie returned, and,
in the early spring, they finally took the diligence for
Nohant. It lay in the middle of Berry, one league
from La Chatre. A comfortable, somewhat rustic
house in the style of Louis XVI, with a garden full
of flowers and a small wood strewn with myrtles.
They were heartily welcomed by George, who had
shortly before been divorced and seemed now half a
chatelaine, half a savage. Free of her husband, free
of her lover, she was filled with joy and announced
that she had had "enough and to spare of great men"
and swore never to look at them again except as
friends. (Till the next time.) The house was al-
ready full: the novelist's two children, Pelletan, their
teacher, a young Nivernais by the name of Gevaudan,
the writer-diplomat Felicien Mallefille, the actor
Bocage. Even with Marie and Franz it was not full
enough to suit George, who still found means to house
visitors from the neighborhood. Everyone lived with
complete independence. They played, they walked,
they bathed in the Indre, they rested. Marie's room
was on the ground-floor, and in it was Franz's beauti-
ful piano, brought there at great expense. A sfcreen
of lime-trees, in front of the window, bathed the house
in their pale shadow, and all together the company

62 FRANZ LISZT

had weighty readings on the terrace: Shakespeare,
Montaigne, especially Hofmann, each commenting in
turn. But they also worked in their various cells, for
Marie wished this also, and Marie, the firm and gentle,
had to be obeyed. While she herself took up again
her Dante and her grammars, Franz spread out on
his desk pencils, ruled paper and scores, and studied
every phrase of the Pastoral, afterwards reducing it
for the piano, striving to preserve all the sonorousness
of the orchestra. His fingers slid up and down the key-
board, picking out a theme, sustaining the flutes and
the double-bass, sounding the symbols and succeeding
in peopling this solitude with sixty musicians.

George listened at her open window. She laid aside
for a moment the thick manuscript of Mauprat, which
had absorbed her for weeks, and noted in her journal:
"When Franz plays, I am comforted. All my sorrows
become poetry, all my instincts are exalted. I love
these broken phrases which he flings on the piano and
which remain half in the air. The leaves of the lindens
finish the melody for me ... Mighty artist, sublime
in great things, always superior in small ones, and yet
sad, gnawed by a secret wound. Fortunate man, loved
by a beautiful woman, intelligent and chaste what
do you lack, miserable ingrate! Ah, if only I were
loved . . ."

Always her complaint. And this in spite of the ex-
ample before her eyes, the "secret wound'* of two
exceptional lovers who were none the less separated
by almost imperceptible misunderstandings of the mind
and heart so imperceptible that they could be caught
only by a practised ear. What were they, exactly?

FRANZ LISZT 63

The novelist watched and thought she recognized
herself much more in Liszt than in Marie. He had
the same directness, the same way of behaving, the
same spendthrift passion. With the Countess there
was a kind of reserve, an intelligence that was more
critical than creative, a judgment that seemed cold
because it was always clear and informed. Already
they loved each other better in trouble than in joy.
Was it because strings full of knots are stronger than
ribbons ?

"Galley-slaves," said George, "who don't know the
value of any chain." Franz had her sympathy, Marie
her curiosity. She carried her off on her walks and
questioned her rather sharply. She would have liked
to shake this indolent creature, for Marie replied un-
willingly, or only in a few ambiguous words: "Alas,
our heart is as powerless for happiness as it is for

sorrow."

In the evening, after dinner, they played charades,
they put on disguises. Or Liszt sat down again at the
piano and played Schubert's Lieder, while the com-
pany gathered in silence in the drawing-room. All
except Marie, who walked on the terrace in her light-
colored dress, with her head wrapped in a veil that
fell to her waist. She walked with a measured step
that seemed not to touch the gravel and described a
wide circle cut in half by the rays of a lamp around
which the garden-moths came to die. The moon sank
behind the lindens. In the distance, a nightingale
struggled feebly against the king of the alders. The
steps of the stroller varied between the andante and
the maestoso, and her movements were so rhythmical

64 FRANZ LISZT

that she seemed a living lyre. At last she went and
sat down on a branch which, flexible as it was, bent
scarcely more than if the weight had been a phantom's.
Whereupon the music stopped, as if some bond at-
tached it to the life of this solitary woman.

When everyone went to bed, George and Franz
still remained in the drawing-room, working by the
light of the same lamp. Each of them lighted his
pipe. George picked up her Mauprat, and at once her
pen began to write, without a hitch, without an erasure,
lifted from time to time to jot down on the margin
some notes for the next book. As for Franz, he went
over the draught of his "piano scores," as he called his
symphonic transcriptions. "We had then," he wrote
to a friend, "three months of an intellectual life the
memory of whose moments I have kept religiously
in my heart."

On leaving Berry, at the end of July, Liszt and Mme.
d'Agoult went first to Lyons. A sad city where it
rained all the time, where there were strikes, famines,
revolution. Some great popular distress was going
on at the time which touched the heart of the disciple
of Saint-Simon. He gave his traditional charity con-
cert in company with the singer Nourrit, another Puri-
tan mystic of the same type as Urhan. (He had once
given back to Meyerbeer his role as Raoul, in Les
Huguenots, because of an alcove scene which he con-
sidered too frivolous.) A great success for Schubert,
whose Lieder Franz had transcribed at Nohant and for
which Marie had composed French words. Among
those who applauded most heartily was a very young

FRANZ LISZT 65

man who had himself presented later : Louis Ronchaud,
the poet. He was not yet quite sure whom he most
admired, the pianist who had just discharged his fire-
works or the woman with the white veil. They saw
him the next day at the hotel. Then every day, and
almost every hour. Since Franz had had his flirtation
with George, Marie had decided to have one of her
own. They wounded each other's hearts at the expense
of a third person. But Liszt was so little alarmed that
he invited Ronchaud to accompany them on the road
to Italy. For it was to Italy they were going now.
By the time they had reached Chambery, however,
Ronchaud was too unhappy to go further. Marie
showed her hand too plainly. They separated
abruptly. The young man hid his tears from Marie,
but he flung himself on Franz's breast. They swore
a lasting friendship, and indeed Ronchaud proved a
faithful heart.

The next day, they went up the Saone towards
Macon to visit Lamartine at Saint-Point. During the
afternoon, as the stage was rounding a hill, they sud-
denly caught sight of the chateau. A real chateau,
belonging to a real country gentleman this time, with
two towers, a chapel, a park, all very different from
the little dormitory in Berry about which Mme. Pif-
foel galloped on horseback. The travellers were
thrilled with respectful admiration and poetry. M. de
Lamartine received them at his threshold, surprised
and delighted, and the whole house was astir to make
these illustrious visitors comfortable for a night. Per-
fect mistress of her household, as an Englishwoman
knows so well how to be, Mme. de Lamartine attended

66 FRANZ LISZT

to everything, while the poet made the tour of the gar-
den with Franz and Marie.

"Viola le bane rustique ou s'asseyait mon pere"

He showed them all the relics dear to his splendid
heart, even the table, inkstand and pen which were
serving him at the moment in the writing of La Chute
d'un ange. A night of stars rose over this Burgundian
peace. After dinner, the Counsellor-general read, by
the open window, his Benediction de Dieu dans la
Solitude, in an exquisite voice that seemed about to
break every moment. Liszt was stirred to his depths
and felt rising within him the majestic andante of
serenity:

"D'oii me vient, mon Dieu, cette paix qui m'inondef
D'ou me vient cette foi dont mon coeur surabonde?"

Then the artist sat down at the piano and played
his Harmonies de Soir, dedicated to this lord of musi-
cal melancholy. But Liszt, with his heart full of
weariness, could not greatly envy a poet who had never
known hope deferred or the complications of doubt.
He had a vehement preference for his own free tem-
perament Marie was sitting with the ladies, and
there was on her brow, in her face, throughout all her
long, delicate body, that something which causes the
anxiety and the delight of men, and sometimes their
weariness*

"WHEN you write the story of two happy lovers,
place them on the shores of Lake Como," Liszt wrote
to Ronchaud a month after they had separated. If
there was a touch of cruelty in this advice, he was him-
self certainly unaware of it ; and this lovely landscape
filled him with enthusiasm. Marie and he were estab-
lished at Bellaggio, a pretty village that rises in an
amphitheatre towards the middle of the lake. They
had rented a villa side by side with that of Mme.
Pasta, the singer. From their house they could hear
the whispering of the lake. Silence for the pianists,
sunsets for the poets. George's "galley-slaves" were
on a voyage of love. They found and adored each
other again. Never had Franz played better the noc-
turnes and preludes of his friend Chopin, called
Chopino, called Chopinissimo. They spent evenings
convincing themselves of their happiness, watching the
Alpine spurs that divide the Lombard lakes, the greens
of Switzerland arrested at the level of the lake by the
violets of Italy. They lost themselves in each other,
then outside themselves, conceiving the "supernatural
harmony of the world." It was ecstasy.

During the greatest heat of the day they went and
rested under the plane-trees of their Villa Melzi and
read the Divine Comedy at the foot of a statue show-
ing Dante led by Beatrice. Marie turned the pages
while she ate figs ripened by the sun. Her love of

67

68 FRANZ LISZT

Faust and the Commedia was almost a mania. They
were her Bible, her well-spring, her source of medita-
tion, her eloquence. She talked of Florence, which
she had not yet seen, but whose history she was study-
ing; she explained Alighieri, and Franz listened to his
professor of mysticism.

"As usually happens with great souls," she said,
"passion exalts in Dante the feeling for personality,
with the need of excellence in all things and the virtuous
desire for a glorious life. Not for an abstract, artistic
glory, such as we manufacture today; he wishes to
feel its living ray. He loves struggle, women, reli-
gion . . ."

"What I do not understand," interrupts Franz, "is
why the poet has conceived Beatrice not as the ideal
of love but as the ideal of learning. I don't like to
find in this beautiful, transfigured body the mind of
a learned theologian discoursing on the mysteries.
Woman does not reign in man's heart by means of
reasoning and demonstration. It is not her business to
prove the existence of God, but to make his presence
felt through love. It is in feeling, not in knowing,
that her power lies. A loving woman is man's veri-
table guardian angel. A pedantic woman is a discord."

"Woman," Marie answers, "is never a pedant in her
heart."

Three young washerwomen begin to sing, three pale
beauties with wide, dark eyes, and Franz jots their
melody down in his notebook. Then they set out in a
boat and zigzag along the bays. In the evening they
amuse themselves fishing by torchlight. Armed with
a long harpoon, the boatman spears the fish while the

FRANZ LISZT 69

pinnace glides over the sleeping waters, and all about
them sound the little bells of the nets. Marie is lying
on the bank, silent, in the stern of the boat, and Franz
listens to these musical voices. She meditates, he rever-
berates. The Fantasie quasi Sonata entitled "After
a Reading of Dante" and the Exercises ^execution
transcendants are the fruit of this autumn in water-
colors. Marie too bears her fruit. It is another
Christmas child, a second daughter who comes into
the world on December 25 and who, in memory of
Como, is baptised Cosima.

As for the problem of money, it was no longer so
agonizing. Franz's reputation was now such that a
few concerts were enough to procure the necessaries
for a long time. The first Italian concert was given at
the Scala in Milan. It was, in spite of all, a difficult
undertaking, for the Italian public still had a perfect
enjoyment only of music for the voice. Neither Hum-
mel nor Moscheles nor Kalkbrenner nor Thalberg nor
Chopin had crossed the Alps. But the publisher
Ricordi did his utmost to prepare a select audience for
the pianist. Liszt became aware of this one morning
at his barber's when the latter, soaping him majesti-
cally, made it plain that he knew what respect was due
to "the first pianist in the world in both fantastic and
inspired playing," as the papers announced.

This concert aroused astonishment and interest but
in no way interrupted the conversation going on in the
boxes. He had to fall back on juggler's tricks and
improvise on themes that were proposed by some
dilettante and then adopted by acclamation. A bowl
was placed at the entrance of the theatre in which the

70 FRANZ LISZT

spectators deposited their votes. Liszt usually found
motifs drawn from Bellini and Donizetti. Once some
one proposed the cathedral of Milan. Another, the
railroad. At his third concert one of the themes sug-
gested was, "Is it better to be married or a bachelor?"
Liszt harmonized and modulated undisturbed. It was
thanks to this stratagem that he imported Beethoven's
Sonatas into Milan.

He revenged himself for this charlatanism at the
home of the Princess Belgiojoso, in the salons of the
Countess Samoyloff and the Countess Maffei, and at
the house of Rossini, who had just retired to Milan.
The wit and elegance of the composer, now at the
height of his glory, charmed Liszt at a sensitive point,
that of perfect politeness, to which he always responded
as an artist. At this time, his Italian muse inspired
him with his Transcriptions des Soirees Musicales de
Rossini and that of the overture of William Tell. He
loved to play in this way with other harmonies than
his own and took pleasure in wearing a mask. But all
this was on the surface. Deep in his heart was anxiety,
the need of work, the need of realizing himself better.
In a moment of despondency, he wrote to Lamennais
and confided to him the recurrence of an old ache:
"Will the hour for devotion and virile action never
come? Am I condemned without remission to this
trade of buffoon and amuser of drawing-rooms ?"

In the spring, they decided to leave for Venice.
This was scarcely the spot in which to find an oppor-
tunity for heroic adventure. The heavy air of the
canals flung him into a new languor. He listened to
the bells of the Capuchin monastery ringing for mid-

FRANZ LISZT 71

night mass and watched the moonlight playing over the
roofs of San Marco. He went to smoke his meers-
chaum pipe on the Riva degli Schiavoni. He was not
yet old enough to enjoy his disappointments, and yet
he was already day-dreaming a little about the plea-
sure he could find in writing a book of souvenirs, "The
Great Tribulations that Accompany Small Reputa-
tions," for instance, or "The Life of a Musician, a
Long Dissonance without any Final Resolution." Dis-
sonance: he had jotted the word down many times
lately. But as soon as he stepped into the gondola
with Marie, it was all changed into harmony, a soft
silence, a sleep of the will, the necessity of giving him-
self to everything that approached him. He was not
living, he was aspiring to live. Everything in him was
"curiosity, desire, disquieting inspiration, the flux and
reflux of contrary whims." He wore himself out in a
labyrinth of passions. He felt contempt for every-
thing that was simple and natural and was eager for
difficulties; and the feeling that might have rendered
him happy made him smile with scorn. The glory
that his first Venetian concert brought him left him
cold, for mere success no longer has any relish for those
who demand superlatives in everything. This dying
city was only suitable for those who were too young
or two old. "The hour for self-devotion and virile
action" was never sounded here. At least, so Liszt
believed.

Then one morning he read in a German newspaper
a detailed description of the disasters that had taken
place in Hungary. Floods on the Danube had de-
stroyed hundreds of villages and ruined thousands of

72 FRANZ LISZT

their inhabitants. Help was being organized; every,
where they were opening public subscriptions. This
news drew the artist out of his amorous inactivity,
and the emotion he felt revealed to him for the first
time the meaning of the word Fatherland. He had
never given it a thought, quite sincerely believing that
he had been adopted by Europe. Now a forgotten
landscape rose before his eyes: Raiding, Wisenstadt,
CEdenburg, the well-known forest ringing with the
cries of the hunters, the swollen Danube, the pastures
dotted with flocks. "O my wild and far-off country, O
my unknown friends, O my vast family, your cry of
pain has called me back to you."

On April 7, Liszt set out alone for Vienna where
he planned to give two concerts for the benefit of the
victims. Instead of two, he gave ten in a single month.
It was enough to exhaust a greater strength than his
own, but the reception accorded him by a public that
had not heard him for fifteen years was such that he
was impervious to all fatigue. Before these cultivated
audiences he could play without fear Handel, Beetho-
ven, Weber, Chopin, Berlioz, and his own dear
Etudes, the "beloved children" that had seemed so
monstrous to the habitues of la Scala. Every evening
the Viennese applauded him more frantically. This
is what one of his friends wrote to Schumann: "Our
impressions are too new, too powerful and too unex-
pected for me to give you a well-considered commen-
tary on them. The common standard is of no use
here, for, even if the colossus can be explained, that
which is properly the spirit, the very breath of genius,
can only be experienced, not described. Imagine

FRANZ LISZT 73

a thin figure, with narrow shoulders, his hair
falling over his face and down his neck, an ex-
traordinarily spiritual face, expressive, pale, most
interesting; an eye that reflects every thought,
glittering in conversation or full of good will,
a sharp, emphatic manner of speaking, and you
have Liszt as he usually appears. When he sits
down at the piano he first passes his hand through his
hair, then his glance grows fixed, his breast calm ; only
his head and the expression of his face show the emo-
tions he is experiencing. It is impossible to give any
description of this playing; one must have heard him."
The poet Saphir wrote: "Liszt knows no rules, no
forms, no style. He creates his own. With him the
bizarre becomes genial, the strange comes to seem
necessary, the sublime and the uncouth rub elbows,
the loftiest is mingled with the most childlike, the most
formidable power and the sweetest intimacy. An in-
explicable apparition . . . After the concert the vic-
torious chief remains master of the field of battle.
The conquered pianos lie scattered around him, broken
strings float like trophies, wounded instruments flee
in all directions, the audience look at one another,
dumb with surprise, as after a sudden storm in a serene
sky. And he, the Prometheus, who with each note has
forged a being, his head bent, smiles strangely before
this crowd that applauds him madly."

The great pianist Clara Wieck noted in her journal:
"We have heard Liszt. He can be compared to no
other virtuoso. He is the only one of his kind. He
arouses fright and astonishment, though he is a very
lovable artist. His attitude at the piano cannot be

74 FRANZ LISZT

described he is original he grows sombre at the
piano. His passion knows no limits. He often wounds
one's sense of the beautiful by destroying a melody.
He has a grand spirit. It can be truly said of him that
-his art is his life."

, The Empress wished to hear him, but the Minister
of Police thought it his duty to warn Her Majesty
in a report that, though she might invite him to court,
it would be premature to honor him with the title of
a royally and imperially licensed artist "because of his
relations with Mme. Dudevant, a follower of the
dangerous Abbe de Lamennais and the author of
several works of a very pernicious spirit published
under the pseudonym of George Sand. The said Liszt
was also carrying on a liaison with the Countess
d'Agoult, who had just given birth to a child in Lom-
bardy. It was true that neither during his stay in
Milan nor since he had been in Vienna had he made
any expression of his political opinions. But he was
frivolous and vain and affected the fantastic manners
of the young Frenchmen of today, and, save for his
value as an artist, he seemed to be an insignificant
young man."

Nevertheless, he played before Their Majesties and
won the sympathies of all. What aroused him specially
was his growing friendship for Clara Wieck, whom he
had just met and who revealed to him the talent of
her future husband, Robert Schumann. The Carnival
and the Fantasiestiicke, which the latter sent him, at
once aroused his greatest interest. He played them
with delight, spoke of them to all comers, and had them

FRANZ LISZT 75

put on his programmes. Chopin and Schumann were
now his favorites.

He had scarcely sent off to his Hungarian fellow-
countrymen the fruits of his labors 25,000 gulden
when Marie sent word that she was ill. Liszt pre-
pared immediately to leave. All his Viennese friends,
artists, painters, noblemen, among them Clara Wieck,
his old master Czerny, and many of his former
Hungarian patrons, gathered at the Hotel de la Ville-
de-Francfort to give him a farewell dinner. At dawn
they were still celebrating. Then they accompanied
the young great man as far as Neudorf , in the outskirts
of the capital. And the red and yellow coach, with
the postillion sounding the horn, resumed the road
to Italy.

Marie, already convalescent, was awaiting him at
Venice, and as the climate no longer agreed with her
they decided on the spot to pack up and settle at
Lugano. But once they were there, still other irrita-
tions set Franz's nerves on edge. Ever since he had
been exercising his wit in the Gazette Musicale, his
articles had found only too many echoes. And the one
that he had just consecrated to la Scala and Italian
music brought down a storm about his head.

First, anonymous letters began to rain on him. A
frontal attack followed in three newspapers: "War
on Franz Liszt." And there were reproaches for
ingratitude, insults, outbursts of indignant nationalism.
Liszt denied vehemently that he had had any intention
of causing wounds; he had spoken only as an artist

76 FRANZ LISZT

and a competent judge. He was vituperated all the
more. He lost his temper and left Lugano in a rage
to face his assailants in Milan. But first he sent this
open letter to the editors of the principal dailies :

"Monsieur, the invectives and insults in the newspapers con-
tinue. As I have already said, I shall not enter into a war
of pens. If it followed the tone which the Pirate and the
Courrier des Theatres have adopted, this could be nothing but
an exchange of scurrilities. I am even less able to reply to
anonymous abuse. Therefore I declare for the hundredth
and last time that it was never my intention to outrage
Milanese society. I also declare that I am quite ready to
give anyone who asks me for them all the necessary explana-
tions. Believe me, etc."

"Friday morning, July 20 (1838)
Hotel de la Bella Venezia."

After this he had himself driven about the streets in
an open carriage in order to announce his presence un-
mistakably; then, returning to the hotel, he awaited
events with arms folded. But no one troubled to pick
up the glove flung down by the beautiful hand of the
pianist.

XI

THERE is a whole family of minds who find their
true life only among the dead, who, in order to create,
invent or press forward, must first tread well-tried
paths. The new is for them a fresh flower on an old
tree, a spring-time in the hoary old apple-tree of the
understanding. Let us say it : love is better than pride.
Liszt belongs to the race of poets among whom thought
is the strongest expression of love. As with Goethe,
Italy became the intellectual fatherland of his emo-
tions. "Italy's sorrow will always be the sorrow of
fine souls," he said. And he added an incentive to
each of his journeys by planning to visit some master-
piece.

In Florence, coming away from Prince Poniatow-
sky's ball at two o'clock in the morning, into the clear
Tuscan night, he passed under the galleries of the
Uffizi and, turning towards the Piazza della Signoria,
stopped at the foot of the Perseus of Benvenuto Cel-
lini. "Perseus," he meditated dreamily, "is one of
those glorious champions who have remained conquer-
ors in the struggle between good and evil. He is the
man of genius, that mixed being born of intercourse be-
tween a God and a mortal. His first steps in life
are combats. He kills the Gorgon, he cuts off the
head of Medusa, the inert force, the brutal obstacle
that always rises between a powerful man and the
accomplishment of his destiny. He throws himself

77

78 FRANZ LISZT

upon the winged horse, he masters his genius; he de-
livers Andromache; he goes forth to marry beauty, the
eternal mistress of the poet; but this will not be with-
out fresh combats. The struggle begins again, and,
since Perseus is the son of woman, since he is more
man than God, he is subject to error. Fatality resumes
its rights. He kills the father of Danae : sorrow and
remorse weigh upon his brow. He is killed in his turn
by Megapenthe . . . After his death the nations raise
altars to him. The primordial idea. Truth eternally
true! Clothing first the most abstract form of art,
it reveals itself in words. Poetry lends it her language ;
she symbolizes it. In Perseus, antiquity gives us a pro-
found and complete allegory. It is the first stage,
the first step in the development of the idea."

At Bologna, he went straight to the museum, tra-
versed without pausing three rooms full of Guides,
Guercinos and Carraccis, and reserved himself entirely
for Raphael's Saint Cecilia. This picture immediately
appealed to his soul in a double aspect: first, as an
expression of all that is most noble and ideal in the
human form, then as the complete symbol of the art
to which he had dedicated his life. The poetry and
the philosophy of the work were as visible to him as
its ideal beauty. The painter has caught the moment
when Saint Cecilia is about to sing; she is going to
celebrate the glory of God, the expectation of the
just, the hope of the sinner. Her soul trembles like
tHat of David when he touched the strings of his harp.
Her eyes are suddenly flooded with light, her ears
with harmony; the clouds open, the ecstatic eyes of the
virgin are lifted to heaven and space rings with hosan-

FRANZ LISZT 79

nahs. To the right of Saint Cecilia, Raphael has
placed Saint John, "the most excellently perfect type
of the tried human affections," consecrated by religion
and sorrow. On the other side is Mary Magdalen,
love again, but born of the senses and attached to
visible beauty. Besides, she is somewhat in the back-
ground, as if to show that she participates only in
the second degree in the divine essence of music, and
that "her ear is captivated by the sensual charm of
sounds more than her heart is penetrated by super-
natural emotion." In the foreground is Saint Paul, in
an attitude of profound meditation. Clearly, what
he finds in music is always eloquence; what he sees in
it is instruction through intuition, which is also a form
of preaching, less obvious but with an equal power to
attract hearts and deeds to the hidden truth. Behind
the saint, finally, Augustine seems to listen more coldly.
His face is serious and sad. It is that of a man who
has erred for many years, who has often transgressed
and is on his guard against even the most sacred emo-
tions.

These four personages grouped about Harmony
thus seemed to Franz the very types of his art, sum-
ming up its essential elements.

But it was at Rome, through Michael Angelo and
the music of the Sistine Chapel, that he had the com-
plete revelation. Here art appears in its unity and
universality. What he had glimpsed through his
initiation by Lamennais took concrete form and found
expression. His feeling and his reflection penetrated
farther every day into the secret relation that unites all
works of genius. "Raphael and Michael Angelo help

80 FRANZ LISZT

me to understand Mozart and Beethoven better," he
wrote to Berlioz. "Giovanni Pisano, Fra Angelico,
Francia, explain to me Allegri, Marcello and Pales-
trina ; Titian and Rossini seem to me like two stars with
similar rays. The Coliseum and the Campo Santo are
not as foreign as they seem to the Heroic Symphony
and the Requiem. Dante found his pictorial expression
in Orcagna and Michael Angelo ; perhaps he will some
day find his musical expression in the Beethoven of
the future."

M. Ingres, director of the Ecole de Rome, became
his intimate friend and took him to see the Vatican
Gallery. Together they reviewed the marbles and the
frescoes. Ingres talked all the time as he walked, and
his words gave the masterpieces a more intelligible life.
Liszt felt that a "whole mystery of poetry was being
fulfilled" in him. They sat down beneath the green
oaks of the Villa Medici and had a heart-to-heart talk.
Then the young man led the master to the piano.
"Come," he said, "don't let us forget our beloved
music. The violin is waiting for you. The sonata and
the minor mode grow weary on the shelf. Let us
begin.

"Ah, if you had heard him then ! With what reli-
gious faithfulness he rendered Beethoven's music!
With what firmness and warmth he handled the bow !
What purity of style, what truth of feeling! In spite
of the respect he inspires in me, I could not help fling-
ing my arms about his neck, and I was happy to feel
that he returned my embrace with an almost fatherly
affection."

From this first stay in Rome sprang the Three Son-

FRANZ LISZT 81

nets of Petrarch, then two fine descriptive pieces for
the piano, Spozalizio and // Pensiero, one inspired by
Raphael's Wedding at Cana, the other by Michael
Angelo's portrait of Lorenzo di Medici. He had been
minded to write them for some time. Goethe speaks
somewhere of the eye that feels and the hand that sees :
Liszt in turn expressed himself by a listening eye and
a seeing heart. It was because he wished to remain
faithful to his inner life that he finished at Rome
his transcriptions of Beethoven's Symphonies. Rome
meant for him a great intellectual advance and a new
expansion of the heart, the ruin of bookish philosophies
but the genesis of the maturities of the soul.

His lodgings were situated in the Via delle Purifica-
zione: was this a symbol? A third child was born
there, a son this time, and he called him Daniel. In
the evening he would play for Blandine the Scenes
from Childhood of Schumann or amuse himself with
his black greyhound. He took up again his mystical
theology and went to mass at dawn, then to the Sistine
Chapel, where he would play on the organ everything
he could find of Palestrina, Allegri and Vittoria. If
the man was not happy, at least the artist was begin-
ning to bear fruit.

Marie would scrutinize the knitted forehead that
was darkly hostile; and, as she was always clear-
sighted, she calmly analysed what Franz was afraid
to confess to himself. The lover's senses no longer
thrilled to love, but love had settled like a disease in
the brain of the mistress. An immense pride kept it
repressed. But its power for grief or reproach escaped
sometimes in spite of herself in a glance or a jealous

82 FRANZ LISZT

word. Some invitation addressed to the artist alone
by a great Roman lady, an allusion to her irregular
situation, was enough to bring on, not exactly a scene,
but a bitter misunderstanding. There were no longer
mutual explanations, only silence. They did not quar-
rel and become reconciled; they judged each other.
"Reason," thought Marie, "when it intervenes so late
in desperate situations, helps not to cure the ill but
only to sound its depths." Each believed he was more
clear-sighted and less egotistical than the other. Marie
did not know that an artist demands liberty even in
love ; and Franz was unaware that wounded pride can
stifle tenderness in a woman.

A mere nothing set them on edge and they became
ironical with each other. She wished to prevent him
from going to the drawing-rooms whither he was con-
tinually invited, but he did not wait for her permission.
She worked, she wrote, she concealed the suffering
of her pride. Often, when he returned late, he found
her still studying by the lamp. She kept up her
journal which he discovered in her bureau one day,
finding in it an eloquence against which he armed him-
self with cruelty: "O my grief, be strong and calm;
bury yourself so deeply in my soul that no one, not
even he, shall hear your weeping. O my pride, close
my lips forever; seal my soul with a triple seal. What
I have said, no one has understood; what I have felt,
no one has guessed. He whom I have loved has pene-
trated only the surface of my love. Dante, Bea-
trice . . ."

He tossed away the book and turned to Marie:

FRANZ LISZT 83

"Bah 1 Dante ! Beatrice ! It is the Dantes who make
the Beatrices, and the real ones die at eighteen !"

Was it the feverish Roman summer that poisoned
them against each other? They fled to Lucca, from
Lucca to Pisa, from Pisa to San Rossore, a fishing
village on the seashore. From there, Franz looked
at the almost imperceptible black spot of the isle of
Elba. He dreamed of Napoleon; then of that other
solitary, Beethoven. Just then the papers brought the
news that the French share of a public subscription for
a monument to Beethoven at Bonn amounted only to
424 francs, 90 centimes. Liszt was furious with indig-
nation. "What a disgrace to everyone! What an
affliction for us!" Very well, he would pay for de-
faulting France. He seized his pen and wrote to his
friend, the sculptor Bartolini, in Florence, asking him
what sum would be necessary for such a monument and
how much time he would need to complete it. Bar-
tolini replied that he would require two years and
60,000 francs for the marble. Liszt informed the
committee at Bonn that he would guarantee this sum.
Marie looked at him, a little frightened, but with ad-
miration.

"Sixty thousand francs! Can you think of it?"

"Three concerts, in Vienna, Paris and London, will
suffice," he assured her.

Then they both went to mass in the cathedral at
Pisa. Marie felt clearly that the "indefatigable vaga-
bond," as Berlioz called him, was going to escape from
her for a long time. And on their return to the chalet
at San Rossore her journal received this confidence:

84 FRANZ LISZT

"Our life is like the tower of Pisa. We begin it with
audacity and certainty, we desire it to be lofty and up-
right; but all at once the earth on which we built
crumbles beneath us. Our will fails ; we believe that
all is lost. Let us then remember Bonnano Pisano,
and do as he did; let us first prop up our soul, and
then make due allowance for our faults. But let us
go on, go on; let us not dread trouble and sorrow;
let us consummate our bending life, so that at least
those who judge us must wonder if it was not better so,
and whether a more complete perfection might not
perhaps have been less admirable."

XII

WHILE Marie and the three children returned to
Paris and established themselves with Mme. Liszt,
Franz went to Vienna. The huge Haslinger, his im-
presario, received him with his boots off and a wide
smile. Not a single seat was left for any of the six
concerts that had been announced. They had already
refused six hundred applications from the Viennese,
all of whom wished to see the most adorable lover in
the world and the greatest genius of the piano. It
was not enthusiasm but a sort of collective passion that
greeted the appearance on the platform of this tall,
smooth-shaven young man of twenty-eight, in his green
dress-coat with its metal buttons and his pearl-grey
trousers, holding his hat in his hand. He bowed
and cast a serious glance over this audience of
three thousand persons in the centre of which,
in his box of crimson velvet, sat the Emperor.
No one could have described the spell that fell
upon the audience when the artist placed his
fingers on the keys. He was like that devil of a
Paganini. The feeling, the skill, the depths of song,
the thought, the spirit, the style, the power, the will,
gifts each of which, at such a degree of perfection,
could alone have made the glory of a virtuoso, were
all united so naturally in Liszt that no one dreamed
of noticing them. One forgot everything, the piano,
the art, the man ; one knew oneself only in a wild drive

85

86 FRANZ LISZT

to lose one's soul. As for Franz, he did not even see
this enchanted crowd to whom he spoke, all unawares,
of the gardens of Lombardy, the monuments of Rome,
or the grief of Dante. A poetry that is fixed, and
therefore limited, is the ransom which the painter, the
writer, the sculptor, pay for the duration of their
works; but the power of the virtuoso lies in a creation
that is constantly renewed, that takes shape for the aris-
tocratic delight of a moment. Perhaps Liszt listened
to himself with as much surprise as his audience. And
not infrequently he played over again, as an encore,
the same piece, transposed into so different a register
of the soul that this public of famous amateurs did
not recognize it.

Amid these soirees at Vienna, he thought of his
Hungarian fatherland and began to plan for the re-
turn of a prodigal son who would go home with his
hands full. One evening a deputation had come to
him from Pest to transmit to him an invitation in the
name of that capital. He accepted and began his
journey by way of Presbourg, which he always asso-
ciated with the memory of the first concert he had ever
given, more than twenty years earlier. The old city
had reserved for Liszt one of those receptions which
the cities of Tuscany gave to their glorious sons in
the days when their heroic qualities were better ex-
pressed in the persons of artists than in those of
princes. The moment his carriage had crossed the
bridge over the Danube, the crowd, massed along the
road, greeted him with cries of "Elgen, elgen Franz
Liszt!" and escorted him with music and delegates
at its head.

FRANZ LISZT 87

Three days later, on December 24, these popular
demonstrations were even greater when he arrived at
the palace of his friend Count Festetics at Pest. A
whole orchestra awaited him there, assisted by the most
famous men's chorus in Hungary. A complete poem
was sung, the music and words of which had been
especially composed for this welcome. He was re-
ceived, in short, like a visiting monarch, and the Hun-
garian nobility clubbed together to give him a
sword of honor, encrusted with precious stones. This
weapon was for long the laughing-stock of the Euro-
pean newspapers, from the Times to the Charivari.
The following quatrain, placed beneath a caricature of
the artist, made a fortune:

"Liszt alone, of all warriors, is without reproach,
For, in spite of his big sword, we know that this hero
Has vanquished only semi-quavers
And slain only pianos."

But the slayer of pianos was about to inoculate his
fellow-countrymen with a national fever, for this Pari-
sian frorri Italy had discovered how to glorify Gypsy
music. He ended his first concert with a transposi-
tion of the Rakoczy-Marche which electrified the
crowd. Twenty thousand enthusiasts formed a torch-
light procession and carried him off in triumph. He
had to address the mob in French (he had forgotten
Hungarian, and he did not yet know enough German) ,
he was made an honorary citizen of Budapest, and was
even granted presently a title of nobility by His Maj-
esty. But Liszt had been familiar for too long with
this kind of powerful emotion, and his ability to enjoy

88 FRANZ LISZT

A i

it had been deadened. These apotheoses bored him,
for he had expected this journey to be a sort of quiet
spiritual refreshment, and he had planned to return
and take his own measure in this countryside of Raid-
ing into which he had put down such slight roots. He
did not succeed, however, in making his pilgrimage in
solitude. The noise of his coming had been enough
for the little village to declare a holiday, and the
mayor, the school-teacher and many peasants rode on
horseback before the Prodigal Son. They killed the
fatted calf on the public square and danced, while Liszt
visited the house where he was born, inhabited .now by
a game-warden. He recognized all the odors of his
childhood, the corner where the piano had stood, the
places on the walls where the engravings had hung,
his parents' room. Sad and deeply stirred, he went
into the church to collect himself and pray while the
village kept silence and joined with the artist in his
simple and somewhat theatrical faith.

When he came out he saw that, as of old, a great
troop of Gypsies had arrived that very day, perhaps
by coincidence, though the old chief may have had
something to do with it. Their orchestra had estab-
lished itself in a neighboring wood of oaks, and al-
ready the air was ringing with "Elgen Liszt Ferencz I"
When twilight fell, they lighted about the clearing a
dozen barrels of pitch from which the flames rose as
straight as pillars of fire. In the centre of this Shakes-
pearian setting stood the Gypsy girls, dazzling, half
naked, their tambourines lifted. At the first clash
of the cymbals they sprang forward with cries all
but the most beautiful one. Motionless, but tense as

FRANZ LISZT 89

a nervous mare, she sang in a deep alto voice, her eyes
plunged in Liszt's :

"Do not fall in love, poor heart; you will stream
with bitterness as my scythe streams with the juice of
the grasses.

'The most beautiful girls are changeable; their
promises are like the larks ; they greet the spring, then
fly sfway."

She assumed voluptuous poses and distilled through
her eyes the appeals of a body that already arched
itself to meet the man's caressing glances. It was her
way of proposing the "bonne aventure." That night
Franz found that the epithet was not deceptive.

It was at Leipzig, in the celebrated hall of the
Gewandhaus, that Liszt met with his first defeat as
an artist. Too extravagant advertising, along with
the refusal of free tickets, had predisposed the most
musically cultivated public in Germany against a per-
former who carried off such noisy triumphs. Leipzig
was jealous of its position as a sort of supreme court
that never ratified on trust the feather-brained verdicts
of the capitals. Moulded by its famous Conservatory,
firmly planted on its own tradition, regulated, some-
what rigidly, by its Bach and Beethoven societies, the
city resolved to pass Liszt through the sieve of its
erudition. So the audience showed itself first cold,
then deliberately hostile. There were even hisses
after his transposition of the Pastoral.

This setback made him ill. He went to bed and
had his second concert put off for several days, but
he consoled himself for this annoyance by the friend-
ship of two men who came to pass whole days at his

90 FRANZ LISZT

bedside, Schumann and Mendelssohn. With Schu-
mann, especially, it was as if they had known each
other for twenty years. This taciturn poet could re-
main for hours beside Liszt, often without saying a
word. Mendelssohn talked enough for two; and,
while the latter ran on, Franz would sink into his own
thoughts or write to Marie. Then, after an infinity
of time, a massive personage would stir in the shadow
where Liszt had completely forgotten him, and say,
as he took his leave, "Well, weVe been at it again,
pouring out our hearts to each other." This abste-
mious talker was sometimes brutally frank, and he did
not hesitate to offer criticisms on the pianistic embel-
lishments of Lizst, that famous "bravura" which he
did not like at all. But as soon as Franz sat down at
the piano he, like everyone else, was completely won
over. "Every day Liszt appears to me greater and
more powerful," he confided to his Clara. And: "He
played his Noveletten for me, a fragment of the Fan-
taisies, the Sonata, and he overwhelmed me. He does
many things that are different from my own way of
thinking, but they are always full of genius."

In spite of such champions, the pianist succeeded
only in half melting the Leipzigers, so he hastened to
resume his European tour. He appeared in Paris, Lon-
don, Hamburg, Brussels, Baden, Frankfort and at
Bonn on the Rhine. He always played from memory;
he was the first artist who had dared to do so. He
invented the Recital, that is, the concert with the piano
alone. He even took one more step along the road
to unity by dedicating certain evenings to a single com-
poser, Beethoven, Berlioz or even Liszt, which seemed

FRANZ LISZT 91

as daring as it was impertinent. But he was no man
for beaten paths and he always delighted in obstacles.
In Paris a portion of the public still condemned him
because of his liaison with Mme. d'Agoult. He com-
pared himself to a player of ecarte who plays for the
fifth point. Well, this season it was "king and vole,"
seven points rather than five. "My two concerts alone,
and especially the third at the Conservatory, for
Beethoven's monument, have been beyond all compari-
son; they are such as I only give in Europe today."
Calm pride, without any boasting, or rather a simple
consciousness of his own quality. There was nothing
unpleasant in it. Nor was there any poetic justice in
the failure in England that so delighted his rivals.
The Englishman is not enough of a musician to dis-
tinguish at once between the good and the perfect.
He needs practice, repetition, the opinion of the au-
thorities. The opposite is true of the Italian, in whom
bad taste is so curiously interwoven with a spontaneous
feeling for genius.

The English impresario was obliged to break off
the tour that was becoming ruinous both for him and
for the artist. One evening, when there were only
ten listeners in the concert-hall, Liszt invited them all
to his hotel where he had an ample supper brought in
and played through for them his entire programme.
He then returned to London, very happily, for his
company was eagerly sought there by two hosts of
distinction, Lady Blessington, a celebrated beauty and
ardent woman who showed a marked inclination for
the artist, and the famous Count d'Orsay. Marie
had no doubt sold something, for she came to London

92 FRANZ LISZT

to rejoin her lover at the very moment when he could
best have done without her surveillance. But he knew
how to be generous, especially now when the English
aristocracy was visiting its Biblical censure on the great
lady and her irregular situation. Liszt one evening
seized the opportunity to put a stop to their disagree-
able whispers. He happened to be at Count d'Orsay's.
Someone who was speaking of the Countess turned to
Liszt for a competent opinion. "My opinion of Mme.
d\Agoult," he replied, "is that if she told me this mo-
ment to fling myself out of that window I should at
once do so. That is my opinion of the Countess."
This was in the style of a Parisian of the great period,
and the Count smiled as an appreciative connoisseur.
It was also typical of Liszt, who delighted in the grand
style and was always human in the direct and living
sense of the word. And finally, it savored of ostenta-
tion, for which he had the same taste as Goethe and
Rubens. He cultivated a weakness for a fine gesture,
appeasing his pride with his good-heartedness. Thus
he loved to give, even to squander, always with open
hands. One had to be truly clumsy to escape his kind-
nesses.

This, however, was exactly the case with a young
German, two years his junior, who was living in the
direst poverty in Paris where he was transcribing his
"arrangements" of Donizetti's music for the publisher
Schlesinger. He had come to see Liszt at his hotel
upon the recommendation of a common friend. Al-
though he had arrived early in the morning, several
gentlemen were already waiting, talking among them-
selves. Liszt soon appeared in an elegant dressing-

FRANZ LISZT 93

gown, and the conversation turned on his recent tour
in Hungary. The German, who understood nothing
of this, was rather bored. At last the great man came
up to him and asked him in a friendly way how he
might serve him. But the stranger seemed to have
forgotten that he was hungry; all he could think of
mentioning was his desire to know him. Liszt prom-
ised to send him a ticket for the Beethoven recital at
the Conservatory, and the German left without having
been able to explain himself. When he had gone, Liszt
glanced at the unknown's visiting-card ; then he handed
it to his secretary Belloni for him to make a note of
it in his address-book. The latter wrote : "M. Richard
Wagner, rue du Helder."

XIII

LISZT was almost painfully sensitive to the graces
of a face. Every face was to him a soul. There is
a promise in glances, in some a promise like that of
love. One of the purest faces he had ever seen was
that of the young prince who, after a concert at Brus-
sels, came straight up with an offer of friendship. He
was Felix Lichnowsky, nephew of that Charles Lich-
nowsky who had been so faithful to Beethoven. They
took to each other at once, and their affection became
so exacting that the two young men were never out of
each other's company. As Felix, who had not yet
inherited his immense property, was in financial diffi-
culties, Liszt had the joy of lending him ten thousand
francs. They went together to Paris, to London and
up the Rhine. Passing through the neighborhood of
Bonn, they visited the little island of Nonnenwerth
where, according to a German legend, Roland of Ron-
cevaux died of love. An old, half-ruined convent, a
chapel, were all that remained to recall the poetry of
this floating grave. Liszt was so enchanted by it that
he rented it and would even have liked to own it. They
hastened to send Marie the news. "We have many
beautiful years still ahead of us," he wrote, encourag-
ingly. "Did I say still? It seems to me that they
should be the only beautiful years, pure, tender, rest-
ful, indefinite. If my doctrines are as abominable as
you say, my dreams are sublime . . . You were not

94

FRANZ LISZT 95

mistaken, Marie: we are not each other's masters.
// we do not attain happiness, it may be because we
are worthy of something better. Why should it matter
what we are forced to be, if, at moments, it is given
us to feel what we are capable of being, what we are
before God and in each other."

She arrived with the children at the beginning of
summer as the two friends were hastily placing in
the half-destroyed old convent what furniture they
could pick up. It was the first time they had had a
real home since their days in Rome. And what a
home it was I an island where no one lived but a few
fishermen, friends of the Loreleis, and a handful of
nuns, perhaps, at their prayers, sirens also. The
Seven Mountains protected this mediaeval hermitage
with its tolling bell. And at night, over the waters of
the pagan river, echoed the new attempts of the com-
poser, the Roi de Thule, Feuilles d'album, the Tombe
de la Pose.

Cologne was not far distant. Ten times they visited
its cathedral, still unfinished, for which a public sub-
scription had once more been opened. And Liszt
wrote : "I don't know why, but the sight of a cathedral
always moves me strangely. Is it because music is "an
architecture of sound or because architecture is crys-
tallized music? I don't know, but certainly there
exists a close relationship between these two arts. I
too shall contribute my artist's mite towards the com-
pletion of the cathedral."

The people of the Rhineland received the news with
joy, and towards the end of August there was a two-
days festival such as these rich vine-growers love;

96 FRANZ LISZT

houses covered with flowers, villas full of merriment,
guns, an illumination, three hundred and fifty choristers
on the steamboat on which Liszt found himself, cele-
brating the wine and the plump, red-faced girls with
their straining corsets.

Between Marie and Franz matters were not growing
any better. Their only bond was the children. George
Sand's saying, "galley-slaves," now assumed a dread-
ful meaning, for no law could intervene to liberate
them. A servitude that is not conditioned by any social
duty and that springs only from the phantom of love
is, just because of its gratuitousness, the most insupport-
able of all chains. How could they help hating each
other, these slaves condemned to happiness? And if
Franz had declared his willingness to throw himself
from a window in order to give the measure of his
feeling, it was because this leap would have put an
elegant end to a poem that was threatening to stop
short The worst of it was that both of these despair-
ing hearts were fully determined to live. We picture
them already heavy with the future. "I ask you for
a magic that will endure," says Obermann. "You
give me a bond in which I can see the naked iron of
ondless slavery beneath these flowers of a day with
which you have clumsily covered them ... I ask
for a magic that will change or revive my life." The
unreasonable demand of this Senancour, who had been
a sort of master of their emotional life at Geneva,
became their own. Yet the magic they demanded they
had in part already, since Franz had his glory as an
artist and Marie her success as a beautiful woman.
To them these things were mere counterfeit wealth.

FRANZ LISZT 97

Franz's mistress was rumored to be having other love
affairs. He did not seek to know the truth, but he
dreamed of finding a new inspiration for himself. So
they parted in the autumn, without many regrets, she
to return to Paris, he to begin a whole season of con-
certs in Berlin.

Twenty-one concerts in two months, a cycle in the
course of which he interpreted almost all that was
essential in pianistic literature, from Bach to Berlioz :
this was the schedule that turned the Prussian capital
upside down. King Frederic William IV, the Crown
Prince, the princesses did nothing but go to concerts,
and the square in front of the Hotel de Russie, where
the artist stayed, was black with people all day long.
Such is the prestige of a glory-crowned face. And yet
this prestige "changed" and "revived" nothing.
Liszt's soul remained disastrously empty. The more
demonstrations there were of those, simplified love-
affairs that make up public enthusiasm, the more it
seemed as if the man's heart were turning to steel.
Ladies kissed his hands, wore his portrait in a brooch,
or clawed each other tearing off his gloves ; some even
brought a small flask to the assemblies at which he
appeared and poured into it what he left in the bottom
of his tea-cup ; others stole the cigars he had smoked.
He despised these sensual travesties of the forget-me-
not. They even stirred in him a loathing for mere
animal pleasure.

One evening, at the royal palace, to which he was
constantly invited, he was presented to Charlotte de
Hagn, the most beautiful and talented of German ac-
tresses. This blonde Bavarian, with her merry eyes,

98 FRANZ LISZT

the curls that framed the lovely oval of her face, and
her reputation for wit, made a bright spot among the
stilted ladies of the court Franz and she were at once
in sympathy. They^ had common friends : Rachel,
Alexandre Dumas, fimile de Girardin. She spoke
French with the least hint of a delicious accent. They
were charmed with each other and were already ex-
amining each other, as future lovers do. At their next
meeting Charlotte wrote on a corner of her fan a
little poem she had composed for him:

"Poete, ce qu'est I* amour, ne me le cache pas.

Lf amour, cest le souffle de ame suave.
Poete, ce quest un baiser, apprends-le-moi.
Ecoute: plus il est bref, plus ton peche est grave."

Franz carried off the fan and set this avowal to
music. The adventure amused him and the peacock
displayed all his feathers in order to speed on the con-
clusion . . . (Seven years later, Charlotte was still
able to write to him: "You have spoiled all other
men for me. No one can stand the comparison. You
are and remain the only one.")

But this beautiful feminine distraction did not pre-
vent Franz from attaching himself almost more lov-
ingly to a woman of fifty-seven who was living in re-
tirement in Berlin, meditating on her past : Bettine von
Arnim. The extraordinary richness of soul of this
friend of Goethe's and Beethoven's fascinated Liszt,
who spent hours at her house listening to her talk.
With the keenness of insight that had enabled her to
perceive the majesty of Beethoven before most of her
contemporaries, she discerned in the young man's glance

FRANZ LISZT 99

the musician of importance, the probable great com-
poser. This was her specialty. She addressed him
familiarly, gave him his place at once in the ranks of
the masters, delighted him with her precious corre-
spondence. "In whatever way you touch me, you awake
in me the need of making myself better, the desire for
striving that one feels in the first enchantments of life.
To be an artist what is it but to feel time ripening
within you? What is the ornen that blossoms along
your path ? Youth. May it be the only mediator of
your immortality! Enthusiasm is nothing if it does
not protect the welfare of the man, if it does not be-
come a living spring of health. You need have no
care for yourself. You do not demand happiness or
expect much of the future. What is it then that you
need? Look, all about you are others full of long-
ings, needs, demands, wasting their time in useless
struggles for ephemeral blessings. Are they blessings?
No, they are nothing but emptiness and vanity. But
you who have bathed your soul in the wells of har-
mony, in what else can you put your trust but in
Nature, the daughter of heaven and earth? You
must capture the world-spirit, it must rise out of
you. . . . You know well enough that of the many who
have applauded you only a few have understood you.
But the young have divined the holy ardor of your
genius. I wish you all good. I am fond of you.
The times have watered me with their fertilizing
showers. In me there sprout and grow the hidden
seeds of the highest power. Rejoice. Ask nothing else
from fate than the power to reveal to the young the en-
chanted world of the heroes. 1 '

100 FRANZ LISZT

So exulted once more this ageing personage who
had revived Goethe and Beethoven in the same way
thirty years earlier. And Liszt preferred her faded
voice to the livelier solicitations of the young women of
Berlin. Charlotte attracted him less than Bettina.
Yes, through this straightforward and still beautiful
little lady his soul was stirred to the height of the
old lion who said: "When two such men as Goethe
and myself are together, the world must feel our
grandeur." They had remained together in his heart,
which was dedicated to the worship of both. It some-
times happens that a young man gives more love to
these exemplary heroes than to the little palpitating
idols of pleasure.

It was in a coach drawn by six white horses, followed
by thirty carriages, each with four horses, and an escort
of students in costume, that Liszt left Berlin. As Bet-
tina had predicted, he had been crowned king of the
youth that was rendering him these honors. A signifi-
cant spectacle, that of the son of the^Esterhazys' stew-
ard, clad in this royal purple, while Lichnowsky, at his
side, looked like a subaltern. A king of Prussia stood
at the window to watch the cavalcade of the elected
monarch go by. People elect genius, which for itself
perhaps never gives the matter a thought.

In his travelling coach, rolling now towards Saint
Petersburg and Moscow by way of Warsaw, Liszt had
carried Shakespeare with him as a companion for his
journey. This is the way the self-taught take their re-
venge on the scholars. They suddenly need a great
spiritual battery to recharge them anew, and they ab-
sorb from a neighboring art whatever supplements

FRANZ LISZT 101

their powers. Delacroix said: "The time given to a
concert, as long as it contains a single good piece, must
never be looked upon as an interruption. It is the
best of nourishment for the soul." It was thanks to
King Lear and The Merry Wives of Windsor, perhaps,
that at Warsaw Liszt enchanted the Poles and revealed
to them the poetry of Chopin.

In Russia, where he had to spend the whole of this
spring of 1842, he found little to please him, in spite of
his triumphs as a virtuoso. The enormous sums he
earned were spent at once or distributed in charity.
This was a kind of need of his nature. The elegance
with which he surrounded himself was also beginning
to be expensive. He had a travelling coach built ac-
cording to his own design and fitted up like the caravan
of a Gypsy king. It became, at his pleasure, a drawing-
room, a dining-room or a bed-chamber. In addition to
his valet, he engaged a footman to trim his beard and
tie his three hundred and sixty cravats. Not the least
of his expenses was the court of admirers who followed
him from city to city and whom he entertained at ban-
quets 'with tireless good nature. Among these follow-
ers were women dressed as boys.

During these years of travel Marie and Franz never
saw each other for any length of time except during
vacations in their Rhenish retreat of Nonnenwerth.
They no longer cherished any illusions ; they knew that
the end of their romance was approaching. For some
time Mme. d'Agoult had been preparing to return to
the world. Thanks to her accomplishments, the influ-
ence of her friends, her brother's generosity, she felt

102 FRANZ LISZT

the moment approaching when she might reappear on
the stage. Not, of course, quite to resume her old
part, but to play a more interesting, a less conventional
role, the role of one of those victims of love who can
always count upon so many sympathies, even so many
emotions. Since her mother had died, she had a large
fortune at her command which would facilitate mat-
ters. Moreover, if her taste for passion was fading,
she was still surrounded by the faithful Ronchaud, the
painter Lehmann and a few other adorers who were
quite ready to teach her how to enjoy more moderate
pleasures. With the sureness of intuition that had al-
ways served her so well, she felt the approach of the
physiological moment when it would be easy for her to
replace the ardor of the senses by that of the spirit.
She wrote a good deal, and a touch of intellectual snob-
bishness guided her towards a political liberalism of a
fairly vivid hue. This was a way of expressing her
scorn for those who had scorned her. The woman of
letters had been born in her through these successive
emancipations. She had already published a short
tale and several articles under the pen-name of Daniel
Stern. With her head full of the prophecies of Mile.
Lenormant, she was preparing two large works, an
Essay on Liberty and a novel, Nelida. Her own ro-
mance, of course. A double method of liberating one-
self in the fashion of the Goethean therapeutic. There
was no more determined amateur of intellectual hy-
giene. Franz had said in the old days : "Hers is less
encumbered with useless baggage than any intelligence
I know," and this was certainly true. Nothing could
ever soften this sharp face. At Florence she had noted

FRANZ LISZT 103

down in her journal, before Fra Angelico's frescoes at
San Marco: "A naive grace lies in these inventions of
ecstatic painting; the lines are pure, the tones har-
monious, but true beauty is not in them because human-
ity is absent from them. A most agreeable art has
grouped these figures in a charming symmetry, but it
is an art that quickly wearies you because you feel that
it is not free and that it is incapable of any develop-
ment. In our admiration for Fra Beato we feel the
glorious impotence of an imagination nourished on
ecstasy." Here is one of the keys of this logical brain :
she could make nothing of ecstasy. Heavens, how un-
romantic this romantic woman was! The truth was
that she lacked imagination, a certain enthusiasm. She
had often smiled at George Sand and her heavy, rustic,
humanitarian poetry. For example, when the novelist
dedicated her Simone to her in the following fashion :

"Mysterious friend, may you be the patron of this poor tale.
Patrician, pardon the antipathies of the rustic story-teller.
Madame, tell no one that you are her sister.
Thrice noble heart, stoop to her and make her proud.
And may you be pardoned for it, Countess.
Hidden star, recognize yourself in these litanies "

Marie, who had so sure a taste, replied by dedicat-
ing her Julien to the comrade of other days :

"I cannot but write your name at the head of this little
sketch. I promised myself to do so in a time that is irrevocably
past. Today, Madame, you will not even guess that name
which I forebear to speak and which was once so dear to me.
Life passes in vain efforts and still vainer regrets. We wished
to love each other."

104 FRANZ LISZT

While Arabella was experiencing her precocious ma-
turity, Franz continued to follow his fancy. He had
made his tour of Spain, given concerts in Paris and re-
turned again to the roads of Germany. There was al-
ways some siren at his heels, for how could he resist
them?

One evening, happening to be in Dresden, he was
most anxious to hear Rienzi, by the new conductor of
the orchestra at the opera-house who had called upon
him several years before in Paris. Upon his entreaty^
the director consented to give a special performance.
Liszt, who was so quick to appreciate the new, recog-
nized at once the genius In this crowded but brilliant
score ; and when, during the entre-acte, Wagner came
up into the box of the tenor Tichatschek, Liszt, still
shaken by this new musical thunderbolt, frankly showed
his emotion. The two men gripped hands warmly.
But Wagner withdrew almost at once, for in the box
there was a woman who was almost too beautiful and
too elegantly dressed, who seemed to look at him with
insolent eyes. It was the dancer Lola Montes, the
pianist's latest adorer.

With the ardor of her half-Irish, half-Andalusian
nature, she had fallen in love with Liszt and had been
his companion for several weeks. Liszt allowed her
to make love to him and amused himself with this dan-
gerous sweetheart. But without any conviction, with-
out any real curiosity. She annoyed, she irritated him
during his hours of work. Before long, he planned to
escape, and, having arranged everything with the hotel
porter, he departed without leaving any address, but
not without having first locked this most wearisome of

FRANZ LISZT 105

inamoratas up in her -room. For twelve hours Lola
raised a fearful uproar, breaking whatever she could
lay her hands on. It had been paid for in advance.
But she felt no rancor. On the contrary, shortly after,
when she had replaced the artist by the King of Ba-
varia (who almost made her queen), she wrote to
Franz, gracefully offering him the handsomest decora-
tion in the kingdom to wear over his heart.

This adventure made a stir. It came to the ears of
Mme. d'Agoult. She seized upon this pretext to break
with Liszt and, more in memory of herself than of her
lover, composed this poetic epitaph :

"Non, tu nentendras pas, de sa levre trop fiere,
Dans V adieu dechirant un reprocke, un regret.
Nul trouble, nul remords pour ton ame legere
En cet adieu muet.

Tu croiras qu'elle aussi* fun vain bruit enivree,
Et des larmes d'hier oublieuse demain,
Elle a d'un ris moqueur rompu la foi juree
Et passe son chemin.

Et tu ne sauras pas qu 9 implacable et fidele,
Pour un sombre voyage elle part sans retour;
Et quen fuyant I'amant dans la nuit eternelle
Elle emporte Vamour"

"Pride, merely pride," he thought. "In all her learn-
ing there is no love of anything but attitudes. It was
Liszt to whom she wished to hold fast; but as for my-
self, Franz, if I were to cast off tomorrow this dazzling
mantilla, what should I be to her? Oh, what an un-

106 FRANZ LISZT

pleasant surprise to find only a heart instead of a fa-
mous man!"

One or two letters were exchanged between them;
and then, since everything was ripe for it so to be, this
harvested love dropped gently into the basket of the
past.

XIV

IN the course of these last years of travel, let us
note three stages that fix three important moments in
the life of Liszt; Pau, Bonn and Weimar. Pau wit-
nessed the gentle and long-foreseen death of his heart
as a young man; Bonn, the apogee of his career as a
virtuoso; Weimar, the sudden crystallization that in-
evitably takes place in the life of an artist, that deter-
mines the scale of its values and outlines the spiritual
profile of his personality.

Franz, beginning his journey into Spain almost at the
moment of his separation from Marie d'Agoult,
stopped in the Pyrenees and gave a concert at Pau.
For him, it was not just one town more on his list. He
had marked it with a cross; for in the neighborhood
lived Caroline d'Artigaux, who had been Caroline de
Saint-Cricq, and after sixteen years his heart had not
yet completely learned to do without her. When he
came out on the concert-stage he saw her at once, seated
in the second row.

The next day he hired a carriage, and, driving
through the autumn fields, paid her a visit. Sixteen
years had changed them very little. They gazed at
each other, hardly able to speak, imagining what life
might have been. In a flash, in the face of the impossi-
ble, the old sympathetic understanding was reestab-
lished between them. It was no surprise to him when,
in her almost inaudible voice, Caroline told him that

107

108 FRANZ LISZT

these years of waiting had been nothing but a long
martyrdom, endured with Christian resignation. Her
modest body was that of a mystic virgin in which no
flame burned but that of the spirit. What a Beatrice
was this! one who had really died at eighteen, as
Franz had once said to Marie in a moment of irrita-
tion. The season of a Beatrice is the first springtime
of the soul; but what man has not found that in losing
its taste for virtue the heart becomes blunted to all
sorts of delicate enjoyments? In contrast to his own
disfigured life, he saw this other, so straight, so fair,
and to know that he had been its gardener filled him
with poetic strength. She said : "Never grow weary of
my memory." And then : "Let me always look up to
you as the single bright star of my life and repeat to
you my daily prayer, 'My God, reward abundantly his
constant submission to thy will.' " Such a love, the
reflection of an exquisite faith, is full of strength for
an artist. Caroline called the bond that united her to
Liszt a "celestial fraternity," and she was so full of
loving purity that she could say without sacrilege : "I
guard most preciously in my heart your least as well
as your greatest actions, as the Blessed Virgin kept the
words of her Divine Son."

It was their last intimate meeting, and, although they
did not know it, a farewell. In memory of this day,
Liszt composed one of his best songs, Ich mochte hin-
gehn wie das Abendroth, which he called the testament
of his youth. Nearly twenty years afterwards, when
she died, Franz wrote to the woman who had most
completely succeeded her in his heart: "How could I
help withdrawing at once into meditation and prayer

FRANZ LISZT 109

when I learned of the death of Caroline d'Artigaux?
She was one of the purest manifestations of God's
blessing upon earth. Her long sufferings, endured with
so much Christian sweetness and resignation, had rip-
ened her for heaven. There she enters at last into the
joy of the Lord she had no concern with that of this
world, and the Infinite alone was worthy of her
heavenly soul. Blessed be God for having recalled her
from her earthly exile, and may her intercession obtain
for us the grace to remain united to him."

After Spain, Liszt set out for Bonn where, on the
twelfth of this August, 1845, *k e festival of the Bee-
thoven monument was to take place. It brought him
honors tinged with bitterness. In the first place, the
committee had refused to accept Bartolini's design and
had decided in favor of a very mediocre bronze by a
German sculptor. He was obliged to let this pass.
Then the local preparations were so niggardly that at
the last moment it took all of Liszt's energy to create
a setting somewhat worthy of the master. The pian-
ist's gold once more carried the day; thanks to that,
they built a handsome hall that could hold an audience
of several thousand. Finally, the usual difficulties
arose in regard to the text of the programme, the con-
ducting of the orchestra and the choice of artists. But
Liszt's will won its x way in all essential points and he
had the satisfaction of directing himself, in the presence
of all musical Europe, the Symphony in C-minor an<J
the last movement of Fidelio and playing the Concerto
in E-flat-major. T

The third day of the festival had been reserved for
Liszt's Cantata, the first of his great symphonic poems*

110 FRANZ LISZT

Let us note this date, not merely for the work itself
but for the history of music. Beethoven had opened
the way for "programme music" with his Pastoral and
Ninth. Berlioz had indicated it, in his turn, with his
Fantastique and his Harold in Italie. But Liszt was
the first who had completely exploited it, and in his
twelve symphonic poems he had shown the principal
forms. This word should not be taken in a pictorial or
literary sense. A good summing-up by Suares explains
the matter in a word: "In music, the landscape is a
sentiment." In contradiction to what is said of him by
hearsay, let us assert at once that Liszt was a prodi-
gious creative genius, a very great painter of senti-
ments. Berlioz always proclaimed this, and he knew
better than anyone else how true it was. After the per-
formance of the Cantate de fete at Bonn, he wrote that
Liszt had "again surpassed what had been expected
from his high faculties as a composer." Saint-Saens
repeated the same thing many times. "Liszt," he said,
"created the symphonic poem. This brilliant and fer-
tile creation will be his best title to glory with posterity,
and, when Time shall have effaced the shining foot-
prints of the greatest pianist that ever lived, he will
inscribe in his golden book the name of the emancipa-
tor of instrumental music." As for Wagner, he said,
"This marvellous man can do nothing without express-
ing himself, without giving himself completely. He
is never contented with merely reproducing. No form
of activity is possible to him that is not productive;
everything in him tends to pure and absolute creation."
We invoke these testimonies to fill the silence that
fell upon the crowd when the innovator's wand had

FRANZ LISZT 111

beaten out the last measure of his softly sung Cantata.
It is true that three days of music and banquets had
worn down the enthusiasm of both audience and per-
formers. In addition, the king, for whom they had
vainly waited for several hours, had not appeared. But
he did appear precisely at this moment, and Liszt, rap-
ping on his desk, started at once to repeat the piece.
The second performance in no way resembled the first.
This time singers, soloists and orchestra were all anx-
ious to shine. And now at last the color and modelling
of the work were apparent, and what had at first
seemed gray and colorless now appeared in all its
power.

Berlioz was the only one to suspect that the old
struggle between the composer and the virtuoso had
begun again in the soul of his friend. Twenty years
of experience had indeed convinced Liszt that he must
choose, that in order to remain faithful to himself he
must choose against his own glory. We often hear it
said that half of talent consists in knowing oneself well
enough to do only what one does best. Liszt believed
just the opposite, not because he was a lover of obsta-
cles but rather as an old follower of Lamennais. "The
loftiest mission of the artist," the master had said, "is
to furnish the divine with modes of expression that are
perpetually new." And Franz felt their urge in his
heart. A few more tours that had been already prom-
ised, a few months of wandering in the East, and he
would determine to seek in seclusion a more sincere ex-
pression of himself. "The moment comes for me,
nel mezzo del camin di nostra vita, at thirty-five, to
break my chrysalis as a virtuoso and allow free flight

112 FRANZ LISZT

to my thought," he wrote to the Grand Duke Karl
Alexander of Saxony. 'The aim that is above and
beyond everything important to me at present is to con-
quer the theatre by my thought, as I have conquered it
during these last six years by my personality as an
artist."

For this double undertaking he was obliged to look
far ahead and lay his plans. No spot would do better
than one of those small German capitals where an afflu-
ent prince, perhaps original, certainly intelligent, would
offer the artist his indispensable support. And among
these elegant courts of art, none was so richly sugges-
tive to the spirit as Weimar.

Liszt had visited it for the first time in 1841, with
his friend Lichnowsky, just before his stay in Berlin.
He had been presented to the Grand Duchess, Marie
Paulowna, the sister of the Czar, and had given three
concerts at the end of which the enthusiastic princess
had made him a present of a ring ornamented with a
diamond. This ring was the symbol of the bonds that
were to unite Liszt to the classic land of the German
Muses.

He returned the following year to be present at the
wedding festivities of the heir apparent, the Grand
Duke Karl Alexander (seven years younger than him-
self) with Princess Sophie of the Netherlands. The
Dowager Duchess at once laid before the artist her
plan for attaching him permanently to Weimar for an
annual season of concerts which he was to direct him-
self. It came at a moment when Franz was for the
first time forced to consider the necessity of choosing
a new basis for existence that should not be subject to

FRANZ LISZT 113

the necessities of chance. No other city offered him
such advantages. In this consecrated air where rose
the temples of Goethe, Schiller, Herder, Wieland, it
seemed, however, as if the chapel of Euterpe were lack-
ing. No doubt this occurred to him subconsciously, for
genius must have a practical vision of things. He ac-
cepted. The very next day a contract was drawn up
with the Director of Theatres :

"Liszt will spend three months here every year, the months
of September and October, or October and November, and
lastly the month of February.

"i. He desires to have, for the concerts he arranges, the
direction of the chapel orchestra, without, however, supersed-
ing M. Chelard, who will direct the orchestra on all other
occasions.

"2. Herr Liszt wishes to remain Herr Liszt for life, withs
out accepting any other title.

"3. As regards the financial remuneration, Herr Liszt will
be satisfied with whatever sum may be thought suitable for
his services during these three months.

"Written after my conversation with Herr Liszt, October
30, 1842. Herr Liszt has informed me today that he will
accept with gratitude and pleasure the title of Kapellmeister
for special services."

Liszt entered upon his duties in 1 844. They were
on the watch for blunders in the conductor of the or-
chestra. They smiled to see him lead without wancjl
or score. But they were soon obliged to recognize that
this tall, awkward fellow knew by heart all the duties
of a leader, caught every mistake and inspired this body
of seventy-five performers with a fire of which they had

114 FRANZ LISZT

not believed themselves capable. Herr Doktor Liszt
had set out to make the Weimar orchestra one of the
first in Germany.

Two years afterwards, during his last tour as a vir-
tuoso, which took him across Austria and Turkey into
Russia, he thought with growing ardor of this fixed
star of Weimar, "the Fatherland of the Ideal where I
should like some day to acquire the rights of citizen-
ship." The wanderer felt more and more the need of
taking root, the necessity of attaching himself to a
tradition ; perhaps he had simply acquired the taste for
peaceful activity among such modest souls as Ecker-
mann, the biographer of Goethe, and Andersen, the
poet of the fairy-tales, who had also come to make
their homes in Weimar. And all this time he was medi-
tating some great lyrical work on behalf of this illus-
trious theatre in which the art of modern German
poetry had been born. For in the matter of musical
art, everything remained to be done. Neither in
France nor in Germany, nor, in fact, anywhere had
anyone dreamed of creating the Weimar of music.
Why should not one attempt it at Weimar itself? A
hereditary Grand Duke of twenty-eight years and the
finest culture, a pure-hearted manager (Herr von
Ziegesar), such friends as Berlioz and Wagner, such a
director as Liszt himself, these were forces that might
perhaps be brought into a group. Not long before,
Berlioz, passing through Weimar, had written to
Franz : "I can breathe here. I feel something in the
air that tells me it is a city of letters, a city of art.
Its appearance corresponds exactly to the idea I had

FRANZ LISZT 115

formed of it. It is calm, luminous, airy, full of peace
and revery. The surroundings are charming, beauti-
ful waters, shady hills, smiling valleys."

But to breathe at ease there after his own fashion,
Liszt still had to make Weimar a city of love.

XV

ONE morning in February, 1847, he opened the win-
dow of his room in the hotel and gazed in astonishment
at the ancient city of Kiev where there blossomed all
about the cathedral the three hundred and sixty
churches, with their Byzantine bell-towers, of the holy
city. This Russian Queen of Sheba, lying beside the
Dnieper in her robe studded with mystic gems, set in
gold, predisposed the artist to some transport of the
soul. There was enthusiasm in the air, the naive
gaiety of the Orient, and a continual ringing of bells
that unfurled over the city a veil of music. The streets
were possessed from one end to the other by the monks
of Saint Basil (the only order of the Greek Church),
by barefooted pilgrims, by Czech women wearing the
pointed caps of Ispahan and the Gypsies who had a
large camp here and swarmed everywhere. Among
such a people it would be impossible not to find a
woman who would be as eager for sentimental raptures
as was the sensual heart of the artist. But how recog-
nize this dove among the fair devotees of the old capi-
tal or among those daughters of the Boyars, reclining
on the cushions of their English turn-outs ? There are
times, however, when secret laws attract drifting souls
to one another.

Liszt, then, gave the concert he had announced,
played his Hexameron, one of Schubert's melodies and
an etude of Chopin's, the Invitation to the Waltz. And

116

FRANZ LISZT 117

at once he touched the heart of a twenty-eight-year-old
princess who, for the rest of her life, was to treasure as
a fetish the programme that she was rolling between
her fingers. There next morning he received, in be-
half of the charity concert he never failed to organize,
a hundred-ruble note in the name of the Princess Caro-
lyne Sayn-Wittgenstein. Liszt called upon her to
thank her. He was received by a young woman of an
Oriental type, with a swarthy skin, whose Tartar eyes
never left the visitor. She smoked a cigar. She spoke
French more subtly than a Frenchwoman. She was a
close friend of the Countess Marie Potocka, the friend
of both Liszt and Chopin. She was a Pole. She had
travelled all over Europe. She had a little girl of ten
whom she adored and a husband, a Russian officer,
from whom she was separated.

In an hour's time they knew everything that was
essential about each other, and this first general clear-
ing of the ground left their hearts naked before each
other. Already they were aware of the youthful begin-
nings of love in themselves. Besides, there was noth-
ing to forbid them. The strong piety of each which
they instinctively divined drew them together more
than it troubled them. Their minds were not in the
least disturbed to find that they were powerful and
free ; on the contrary, they gave themselves up to the
rapture of discovering how much alike they were. This
meeting, so unexpected and also so complete, obliter-
ated from the past everything that was weak, so that
shortly afterwards Liszt could say, in all sincerity:
"What circumstance or what incident of my life is
worthy of your interest for five minutes?" There is no

118 FRANZ LISZT

doubt that for some people existence has no value ex-
cept in love. It was passion that Liszt needed in order
to rise above the flood of good fortune that threatened
to drown his powers. Now he found himself faced
with Goethe's advice which had once made so strong an
impression on him in the little village of GEcfcnburg : to
cherish the idea of the impossible.

As for the Princess Wittgenstein, perhaps these
words of Barres will explain her: "When a young
woman feels both her heart and her hands empty."
Only daughter of one of those great Polish proprietors
who counted not less than thirty thousand serfs on his
land, educated by an intelligent father, who was both a
hypochondriac and a good Latin scholar, unhappily
married at seventeen, dreaded for her wit, administer-
ing herself her immense estates in Russia, this intellec-
tual Amazon was bound to fall in love at first sight with
an artist who was so marvellously feminine and im-
pressionable and over whom she felt able to exercise
an increasing authority. To an imperious will this is
a very strong temptation. She yielded to it and only
a few days later took Liszt with her to Woronince.

It was in the midst of the Podolian steppe, between
Kiev and Odessa, a property, an estate as large as a
province. The master's dwelling was flanked by a
chapel and surrounded by a flower-garden, a fine oak
wood and a lake whose shores were lost on the horizon.
The furnishing of the house had been entirely contrived
by the princess. The drawing-room was in oak, with
a large-patterned chintz on the walls. Her own room
was uniformly hung in grey, with couches in red and a
crucifix that rose to the ceiling. That of the child

FRANZ LISZT 119

Marie was entirely in white. The study and the library
were in blue and furnished in the English style, and
there was even a pale green music-room furnished with
sofas and a bear-skin on which the princess was accus-
tomed to lie when she smoked her tchibouk. There
were Russian stoves everywhere. Many other rooms
opened out of the corridors where the servants slept at
night a regular body-guard. All these domestics
were musical, and when their masters were bored they
would sing in chorus, accompanying themselves on
stringed instruments. In the little, elaborately gilded
chapel some travelling Capuchin would come and say
mass on Sunday, or there would be a Roman Catholic
priest for whom they had to send a great distance.
When all spiritual help was lacking, the Princess her-
self read the liturgical prayers in Polish. As for the
Prince, he hunted wolves on the steppes or women in
all the watering-places of Europe.

Liszt was at once initiated into the Princess's occupa-
tions, her philosophical studies of the Talmud, Fichte
and Hegel. The most curious thing of all was that
here, as in Rome and Como, a special table was re-
served for those Bibles of Daniel Stern, Faust and the
Divine Comedy. Liszt's fantasy, After a Reading
from Dante, composed at the Villa Melzi, recurred to
his memory, but merely as a simple prelude to a new
work he was contemplating. The moment he spoke of
it to the Princess she was full of enthusiasm for the
idea and full of pride at the thought of at once giv-
ing their love a poetic nourishment that would double
its amplitude. Berlioz's theory of the union of instru-
mental music with poetry seemed to them a preparatory

120 FRANZ LISZT

step towards even richer forms to which why not ?
they would add painting. Musical diorama, harmonic
painting, such were the words they invented for this
ideal collaboration and which were to ripen during the
space of several years before becoming the Dante-
Symphony. A Tragedy of the Soul might be added as
a sub-title, for Liszt's genius obliged him gradually
to give up the useless coloration and literary additions
to his subject. At the time, Wagner alone was occupied
with the same artistic problems. Except for such great
classical masters as Bach, Gliick, Mozart, Haydn, Bee-
thoven and a few newcomers such as Berlioz and Schu-
mann, the art of music was too steeped in platitude for
Liszt not to feel the joy of the apostolate into which
he was being driven. The plan in regard to Weimar
once more arose in his mind, already beautified by this
most stimulating presence. Whatever might happen in
the future, he had capital reasons at present for a new
love and a new life.

After this first luminous stay at Woronince, Liszt
finished his tour in Russia and began to prepare for a
new way of living which in his mind was no longer sepa-
rated from that of the Princess. With the first stages
of his journey she began to receive passionate testimony
of this : "I can advance only towards you and with you.
All my faith, all my hope, all my love are concentrated
-and summed up in you et nunc et semper" "Ineffable
secrets are revealed to me through you ; henceforth I
shall be able to die in peace blessing your name." "I
understand only two things, work and the fifth chapter
of the Imitation of Jesus Christ." "Ah, if only I may
see you again soon, for my entire heart and soul, faith

FRANZ LISZT 121

and hope exist only in you, through you and for you.
May the Lord's angel lead you, O you who are my
radiant morning star."

With the first days of October Franz returned to
Woronince where, this time, he stayed four months in
a happiness of forgetfulness, an adoration shared by
two in a solitude that seemed luxuriously delightful to
the new lovers. Perhaps they ran less risk than others
who from the first make their love an ex-voto which
they hang on the grille of the chapel and not the God
himself to whom they pray. They are more concerned
with "living for an idea" than with "living their own
lives," for it sometimes happens that when one lives
for an idea one lives one's life in addition. Carolyne's
plans were rapidly formulated. As a matter of fact,
they were of a strategic simplicity. The Princess was
to obtain the annulment of her marriage at Rome
(since she had been married as a minor and against her
will) , then she was to marry Liszt and they were to re-
tire to Weimar. While the great musical plans were
being set on foot, the Princess was to arrange the
judicial or financial difficulties of her divorce, assisted
at the Czar's court by the Grand Duchess Marie Pau-
lowna, her sister, who could refuse neither the artist
nor the Princess her protection.

With this well arranged, Liszt returned to Germany,
somewhat confused by all these matrimonial plans
which had been so rapidly sketched out, while the far-
sighted Carolyne sold a piece of her property and set
aside an initial sum of a thousand rubles which she
sent out of the country. A wise precaution ! In fact,
it had hardly been taken when the cannons of '48 im-

122 FRANZ LISZT

perilled all the love affairs of Europe. Fortunately,
the Princess Wittgenstein had foreseen the advis-
ability of taking a cure at Carlsbad. Her baggage was
packed, her travelling coaches prepared; she crossed
the frontier at the very moment when, as in Michael
Strogof, a courier from the Emperor arrived at a
gallop with orders to close all the gates of Russia. So,
while the Revolution beat against the Czar's barri-
cades, Carolyne was received on Austrian soil by a
messenger from Prince Lichnowsky and conducted to
his near-by castle of Krzyzanowitz.

Franz was waiting for her there, at the home of his
dearest, his "supremely intelligent" friend, who had
just left for the Diet at Berlin. The house was abso-
lutely deserted; except for the servants no one! It
was, therefore, a second Woronince, in the middle of
April, in the midst of the spring silence, where Franz
experienced the seldom-realized joy of work and love
created side by side. He blocked out his second sym-
phonic poem, Hungaria, beside her whom he already
called a "splendid example of the soul." And each day
the understanding between them became more perfect,
without arousing that intellectual uneasiness which,
between Franz and Marie, had always chilled the
warmth of their hearts. This too-witty Carolyne who
had intimidated the chamberlains of Saint Petersburg,
this Diana of the steppes, this Catholic who was at once
Nordic and Byzantine, had found her master. As
sometimes happens with these exacting and faithful
natures, she was afraid she would be unable to follow,
not the artist to his heights, but the man of humble
origin, the steward's son, on his low Hungarian plains.

FRANZ LISZT 123

Blushing with a shame that filled Franz with pride, she
asked her lover not to set out for Weimar without hav-
ing visited Raiding and Eisenstadt with her. And it
was only after a pilgrimage to Franz's paternal Lares
that they arrived in the little city where they planned
to live the poem of their love.

Liszt was met there by a letter from that self-willed
and singular Wagner to whom his own future, as all
the signs of his mind and heart told him, was already
closely bound. "Excellent friend, you told me but
lately that you had closed your piano for some time, so
I suppose that at least for a brief period you have be-
come a man of wealth. Things have been going badly
with me, and it suddenly occurred to me that you might
help me. I have undertaken myself the publication of
my three operas. The sum in question amounts to five
thousand thalers. Could you get it for me? Have
you got it, or has someone got it who would give it for
love of you ? Would it not be most interesting for you
to become the publisher-proprietor of my operas ? And
do you know what would come of it? I should become
a man, a man to whom existence would be possible, an
artist who would never need to ask for another penny
in his life, who would be content to work with en-
thusiasm, with pleasure. My dear Liszt, with this
money you could buy me out of servitude. Do you
think that as a serf I am worth that price?"

XVI

WHEN one thinks of Goethe at Weimar, in the very
first years of the nineteenth century, it is impossible not
to unite "with his image that of Schiller. One does not
willingly separate from each other these two friends
who lived side by side, seeing each other every day and
writing to each other many times in the week those
highly polite letters. In the latter they spoke of their
work with an absence of emphasis, an ironical detach-
ment, a critical sincerity that lead us to think of the
relation of these great men as one of an exquisite mod-
esty. They took walks together, paid their court to the
Grand Duke, botanized, dissected caterpillars, haunted
the theatre, and submitted to each other page by page
their reciprocal translations of Voltaire and Shake-
speare.

This was the very noble precedent, in the classical
and periwigged mode, of the friendship that united
Liszt and Wagner half a century later. With the dif-
ference that the Grand Duke Karl August was now
called Karl Alexander. And that the heroes were dif-
ferent, of course. Wagner and Liszt were not at all
like these two Hellenes. From their attachment, never-
theless, from their ideals, the new musical Europe was
to be born. And almost a universal aesthetic.

It is sad to think that Wagner ended by stifling un-
der his foliage the fine poplar whose sap he drained and
whose infinitely sensitive vibrations he enjoyed more
tEan anyone else. To such a degree, in fact, that an

124

FRANZ LISZT 125

uninformed tradition no longer takes into account any
but the less pure works of Liszt, the juggler's pieces
and acrobatic tricks. Here and there one occasionally
finds a concert society with a conductor in quest of
rarities who revives a fragment of one of his great
compositions. But it is almost unexampled to find one
with the courage to substitute for the worst and most
ill-prepared Wagnerian potpourri a whole work by the
master of Weimar. His diversity, his fantasy, his gen-
eral curiosity, his rich experimentation, his instrumental
boldnesses, the multiple researches of that all-curious
sensibility, have thus remained almost unknown to the
public which he was the first to attempt to win over to
a cause not his own. Like some otlber clear geniuses, he
felt a certain attraction for the obscure. His works
have a touch of this quality, but it is rather intellectual
than harmonic. The dramatic reform achieved by
Wagner was so brilliant that what Liszt did in this
way, altogether inward and purely creative of forms,
has passed almost unperceived. Only today have a
few composers set about exploring his scores for the
rich treasure of thematic and instrumental ideas which
they contain. Let us hope that we shall recover them
some day, purified of their alloy, as they were written
in the first years of Liszt's maturity in the little Thu-
ringian town dedicated for the second time to the
Muses.

"Richard Wagner, conductor of the Dresden orches-
tra, has been here since yesterday. There is a man of
admirable genius, yes, an all-powerful genius and such
as we need in this country, a new and brilliant appari-

126 FRANZ LISZT

tion in art," Liszt wrote to his secretary Belloni. Wag-
ner at Weimar; in other words, Franz had agreed to
the proposed serfdom. Meanwhile, during the nine
or ten months that passed between the first letter of
the Saxon composer and his appearance at Weimar,
Liszt had taken firm root and boldly initiated the work
of reform which he had in mind. A more intelligent
and truer devotion to the masters of the past; a deeper
and more effective study of the works to be played; a
liberal and friendly welcome to the young, the un-
known and the misknown, such were the principles of
his directorship. An almost complete independence was
assured to him by the Grand Duke Karl Alexander,
whom he had won over to his cause. Moreover, this
young prince's one desire was to do for music in Ger-
many what his grandfather had done in the interests of
dramatic poetry.

For the birthday of the Dowager Grand Duchess,
Liszt arranged that every year a new opera should be
given by a German composer. The previous year he
had chosen Martha by Flotow. This year he thought
of Tannkauser, which had only been produced at Dres-
den. But his confidence in Wagner was still limited.
As yet he knew nothing but Rienzi. But as the Prin-
cess Wittgenstein was obliged to go to Dresden on
the matter of her passport, he begged the director of
the royal theatres to enable her to hear this Tannhau-
ser of which people were saying that it was a "rotten"
work. The director acceded to the desire of Liszt
with "earnest commiseration," and the Princess came
back, vibrant with enthusiasm, with the score. Liszt
placed it on the piano, read it. ...

FRANZ LISZT 127

A grave moment, and one that turned out very hon-
orably for the history of the man as for the history
of art. Text, music, instrumentation, were a complete
revelation of what he had been looking for himself.
It was his own dramatic conception miraculously
realized. It seemed like his own ideal modeled by a
strange hand. The higher the structure rose under his
fingers, the more this Tannhauser, which destroyed in
Liszt a part of his reason for being, transported him to
the summit of all possible musical emotion. It was
a deliverance, an enormous arrangement of rhythmical
joys. What movement in all its grandeurs! Every
crescendo was the pride of an intellectual ambition.
Man was exalted here as the prince of all desires.
Nevertheless, his heart secreted the evil from which his
immense decay resulted, from which his sorrow was
born and from this his pardon. Such was the rhythm
in which Franz found the true music of his soul. This
Wagnerian victory, with consequences for him almost
as unequivocal as those of death, Liszt hailed with
tears of gratitude. He foresaw, however, how much it
was going to cost him : a still incalculable part of him-
self and some of his best friends. Meyerbeer, for in-
stance, who was broken like a plaster cast. And Ber-
lioz, Berlioz the susceptible, whom he had always so
eagerly defended and whose Cellini he had promised
to perform.

But the Princess, already won over to Wagner, did
not convince him at once. What position should honor
reserve for friendship when one's artistic conscience
whole-heartedly supports a new and vivid admiration ?
decision he had to make was too serious to spring

128 FRANZ LISZT

from enthusiasm alone. He retired to the little ora-
tory that he and Carolyne had arranged in their house
and remained there alone on his knees, more than ever
filled with a sense of the sacred character of his mis-
sion. A touching prayer, and less nai've than it seems,
since actually the future, not of a single man but of a
whole group of minds, depended on the reply that was
granted. When he came out, his face pale and solemn,
Liszt had chosen the cause of art.

As soon as the court had authorized the production
of Tannhauser, he wrote to Wagner. But the latter,
harassed by the stupid chicanery of the director of the
Saxon theatres, could not come to Weimar to be pres-
ent at a single rehearsal. A correspondence therefore
followed between Wagner and Liszt, and one of the
most beautiful friendships that have ever bound two
men.

"Sir and dear friend,

"You know already through Herr von Ziegesar with what
ardor, what admiration and ever-increasing sympathy, we are
studying your Tannhauser. If it is possible for you to come
here on the I5th, to be present at the last rehearsal and the
performance that will follow, the next day, it will be a true
joy for us all.

"February 9, 1849."

"Dear friend Liszt,

"According to all that I hear, you, after the unprecedented
success of your artistic life, have succeeded quite recently in
winning another, in no way inferior to the finest of your former
triumphs and probably even surpassing them in more than one
respect. Do you think it is impossible to judge this from a

FRANZ LISZT 129

distance? Read for yourself. Four years have gone by since
my opera Tannhduser was published and not a theatre in the
world has yet thought of playing it. And then you came from
a great distance, settled in a town that possessed a small court
theatre and set to work at once, enabling your friend, who
has been so sorely tried, to take one more step forward. With-
out wasting any time in talking and negotiating, you have con-
centrated all your energies on this work which is new to you
and placed my piece in rehearsal. Oh, you may be certain
that no one knows as well as I do what it is to produce a
work of this kind in the present circumstances. To do so one
has to throw body and soul into it, sacrifice one's body and
soul, concentrate all the fibres of one's body, all the faculties
of one's soul, and have in view this single end: to bring to
the light the work of one's friend, and in such a way that the
representation will be beautiful and useful to one's friend.
Dear friend, you have lifted me up as if by enchantment ... I
have found again the courage to endure. Once more, it is to
you I owe this"

The first performance took place on February i6th,
followed by a second on the i8th, at neither of which
Wagner, prevented by his chief, was able to be present.
Both were brilliantly successful.

"My dear friend," wrote Liszt, "I owe so much to your
valiant and superb genius, to the grand and burning pages of
your Tannhduser, that I feel quite embarrassed to accept the
thanks you have the kindness to address to me on the occasion
of the two productions which I have had the honor and the
happiness to direct. Henceforth, once for all, will you count
me among the number of your most zealous and devoted ad-
mirers from far and near count upon me and command me?"

130 FRANZ LISZT

Wagner replied:

"We two are coming along famously, are we not? If the
world were ours, I think we should give people a good deal
of pleasure. I hope that, so far as we are concerned, we
shall always understand each other. May those who do not
wish to be with us remain behind us; let us in this way seal
our alliance."

Two months later, the revolution, which was still
smouldering a little everywhere in Germany, broke out
in Dresden. The results were serious, hastened as
they were by the intervention of the Prussian troops.
The country roads were soon crowded with dispersed
rioters, and, on the morning of May I3th, Wagner, a
fugitive, carrying a valise, presented himself before
Liszt. Having taken his little part in the occurrences as
a revolutionary theorist and lover of great spectacles,
Wagner was somewhat anxious about the consequences
it might entail. Franz was enchanted at the visit of
his great man and stirred also by the memory of the
violent days of 1830. It was necessary to establish his
friend in some safe place, and Liszt at once thought
of the Altenburg.

The Altenburg?

The residence of the Princess Wittgenstein. Come.

Carrying in turn the valise in which the composer
had packed a few belongings, the manuscript of his
Lohengrin, the Flying Dutchman, and the notes for his
Jesus of Nazareth, they crossed the Horn and clam-
bered through a forest and a park laid out in the old
days by Counsellor Goethe, to the great house, rising
above the town, that had been rented by the Princess.

FRANZ LISZT 131

There Wagner spent eight days in passionate argu-
ments. His head was crammed with manifestoes and
literary works of which he was developing the outlines :
Art and Revolution, The Work of Art in the Future.
One evening, hidden at the back of a box, he watched
a rehearsal of his Tannhauser, conducted by Liszt, and
the tears came to his eyes :

"I was astonished to find in him my second self. What I
felt in composing this music, he felt in directing it; what I
wanted to express in writing it, he has uttered through the
voices of the singers. Marvellous! Thanks to this rarest of
all friends, and at the very moment when I was becoming a
man without a country, I win what I have sought everywhere
and in vain: the true, the long awaited homeland of my art.
When I was in exile far away, this great vagabond established
himself firmly in a little retreat in order to make a homeland
for me. Everywhere and always interested in me, prompt and
decided in his help when it was needed, his great heart open
to each of my desires, with the most devoted love for every-
thing that touches rue, Liszt has become for me such a friend
as I have never before found, and this in a measure whose
fullness can only be comprehended when it really envelops one
in its full force."

But a warrant for his arrest had been issued. Liszt
was informed of it by the Grand Duchess herself, who
wanted to give Wagner time to find a refuge. She car-
ried her benevolence so far as to make it possible for
him to visit that most ancient feudal castle of Thurin-
gen, the Wartburg, which he had just celebrated in
so brilliant a way. Descending again from the heights,
the two men said good-bye to each other. Wagner
escaped to Bavaria, then to Switzerland and Paris.

132 FRANZ LISZT

Liszt shut himself up three whole days with the score
of Lohengrin. Three days during which he did not
leave his piano. The Princess carried his meals to him
herself, so that his work should not be interrupted.
Nevertheless, the technical and vocal resources of the
Weimar theatre were still so inadequate that he was
obliged to let a year go by before he could think of a
performance. But Wagner, who was hardly more suc-
cessful in Paris than he had been ten years before, was
seized with that eager need which an artist feels to
see at last the birth of a work that has long been fin-
ished and obstructs his heart. Again he turned to
Liszt :

"Dear friend, I have just read a few passages of the score
of my Lohengrin. As a rule, I never re-read my works. I
have been seized with an immense desire to see this opera per-
formed. I am therefore addressing to you an urgent prayer:
to have my Lohengrin played. You are the only man to whom
I would address such a prayer as this. To no other but you
would I confide the creation of this opera; but I entrust it
to you without a shadow of fear or hesitation, with an absolute
confidence. Have my Lohengrin played, so that its entrance
into life may be your work."

And then :

"Find me someone who will buy my Lohengrin in its
entirety. Find someone who will order my Siegfried. I will
not be over-exacting."

Liszt was touched again by these appeals. He
agreed. He sent his friend some money drawn from

FRANZ LISZT 133

his own capital. He induced the Grand Duke and the
management of the Weimar theatre to send funds also.
He exerted himself in every possible way. He wrote :

"You have never ceased, I assure you, to be present with
me and very close to my heart. The serious and enthusiastic
admiration which I have consecrated to your genius cannot
admit of procrastination and merely sterile sentiments. You
may have complete confidence that I shall allow no circumstance
to prevent me from doing everything that it is possible for me
to do in the interest of your reputation or your glory, in your
personal interest. But such a friend as yourself is not always
easy and convenient to serve ; for those to whom it is given to un-
derstand you must above everything serve you intelligently and
with dignity. Your Lohengrin will be given under most excep-
tional conditions and the best ones for its success. The manage-
ment is to make an expenditure on this occasion of nearly 2000
thalers, something that has never been obtained before at Wei-
mar in the memory of man. The press will not be forgotten
. . . The whole personnel will be aflame with enthusiasm. The
number of violins will be somewhat augmented (16 or 18 in
all), the bass-clarinet has been purchased; no essential will be
lacking for the musical material and its arrangement. I shall
take charge myself of all the rehearsals of the piano, the
choruses, the quartettes and the orchestra ... It goes with-
out saying that we shall not cut out a note, an iota of your
work, and that we shall give it in its beautiful absoluteness, as
far as it is possible for us to do so."

From Wagner :

"I must say it: you are a friend. Forgive me if I tell you
this again, for I have ever considered the friendship of two men
the noblest and most admirable bond that can exist between

134 FRANZ LISZT

two human creatures, and you reveal this idea in its fullest
reality, no longer leaving it a mere conception, but so that I
feel and actually touch in a way what a friend is ... If any-
thing exalts the heart, it is to have a friend; but there is some-
thing that exalts it still more, and that is to be a friend. In
more than one respect, your letter has made a great impres-
sion on me. I have felt the pulse of our modern art, and I
know that it is dying. But, far from saddening me, this fills me
with joy, for I also know that it is not art that will perish, but
only our particular art, an art that is outside of real life, while
the true art, immortal, always new, is still to be born. The
monumental character of our art will disappear ; we shall shake
off the servile attachment to the past, the egotistical anxiety
for permanence and immortality; we shall ignore the past and
the future in order to live and create in the present, the present
alone. When you have launched Lohengrin in the world to
your own satisfaction, I shall finish my Siegfried also, but only
for you and for Weimar, Two days ago I would not have
believed myself capable of making this resolution. So it is to
you that I owe this."

From Liszt :

"We are swimming in the open ether of your Lohengrin, and
I flatter myself that we shall succeed in giving it in accordance
with your intentions. Every day we have from three to four
hours of rehearsal, and, as far as things have gone, the parts
and the quartette are passably in order . . . Everything that
can be humanly realized at Weimar in the year of grace 1850
will be brought about, you may be assured, for your Lohengrin,
which, in spite of all the stupid negotiations, the mock fears and
the too genuine prejudices, will be produced very worthily
I guarantee on the 28th of this month."

And later:

FRANZ LISZT 135

"Your Lohengrin is a sublime work from one end to the
other : the tears have come into my eyes at many a passage. As
a pious churchman underlines word by word the whole Imita-
tion of Jesus Christ f I may easily come to the point of underlin-
ing note by note your Lohengrin"

Nevertheless, this premiere did not give Liszt all
the joy that he anticipated. In the first place, the au-
thor, still under the ban of exile, was unable to be pres-
ent. (He took part only in spirit, following the pro-
duction hour by hour in the Hotel du Cygne, at Lu-
cerne, where he had come to spend two days.) Then
the impression it made musically and dramatically was
much less than he expected. Wagner, at Zurich, after
it was all over, understood the reasons better, the lack
of life, of fire, of the proper syllabic accentuation on
the part of the actors, and especially the poor taste
of the spectators who were expecting to enjoy recita-
tives in the Italian style and whose minds were not pre-
pared to encounter a dramatic performance. From
these weeks that were so full of pathos for the two
artists, let us only recall the strong upwelling of their
affection, their love, to use the word which they were
never ashamed to write. Such was the interpenetra-
tion of their spirits that one can hardly find any other
word to express it better. Both of them always felt a
jealous pride in it.

"I am filled with the deepest and most bountiful emotion,"
wrote Wagner, "when I see how I have succeeded through my
labors as an artist in so interesting you in my work that you
are willing to employ a large share of your extraordinary
faculties in opening the way for my ideas and propagating

136 FRANZ LISZT

them, not only in the outer world but also in the interior of
beings, in their true inwardness. I see in ourselves two men,
worlds apart in our ways of penetrating to the heart of art,
who have found each other and given each other a fraternal
hand in the joy of their discovery. It is only under the influence
of this feeling of joy that I can accept without blushing your
expression of admiration, for I know that when you vaunt my
qualifications and what, thanks to them, I have produced, you
too are only expressing the joy of our having found each other
in the heart of art ...

"How extraordinary everything has been since you appeared !
If I could describe to you the nature of the love that you
inspire in me! There is no torture, there is no voluptuous
delight that has not vibrated in this love. One day I am tor-
mented by jealousy, by the fear of that which is alien to me
in your particular nature. I am full of anxiety, of alarm, I
am even on the brink of doubt. Then suddenly there rises
in me a flame like that which burns a forest, and everything
is consumed in this fire ; it is a fire that nothing but a torrent
of tears of joy would extinguish. You are a marvellous man,
and marvellous is our love ! If we did not love each other to
this degree, we should have to hate each other terribly."

Let us not attribute this mainly to exaltation, to
romanticism. Let us not seek for explanations where
there is no need for them. Wagner and Liszt had both
loved others sufficiently, with all their body and all their
soul, for us to grant them without any mental reserva-
tion this holy possession of the spirit.

XVII

THE more Liszt distributed with prodigal elegance
the genius of his hands, the more reserved and shy he
became in regard to his own soul that is, once he
really possessed his soul. He had scarcely become
aware of it before his thirty-ninth year. His life up to
that had been "spent in waiting," he said. That quiv-
ering activity as a virtuoso had been, during twenty-five
years, only a preparation for the toil of personal crea-
tion, coupled with love. During the Weimar period,
the rhythm of his existence was divided between two
tempos: the hours of tender solitude, when he com-
posed, and those passed in the theatre or in the concert-
rooms, when he expressed himself.

Immediately after Lohengrin, Liszt was entrusted
with the musical part of a festival which the city was
preparing to commemorate the hundredth anniversary
of the birth of Goethe. Liszt thought at first that he
would open the ceremony with the Faust of Schumann.
But the nervously sensitive Schumann had never lost
his feeling of resentment against Liszt, following an
argument on the Leipzig school, and remained obdu-
rate. Liszt smiled and placed Faust in rehearsal just
the same. He repeated the offence two years later by
giving Manfred for the first time, then the opera of
Genevieve. This was the only vengeance that Liszt
drew from a misunderstanding which, in the case of the
Schumanns, soon turned into an inexplicable hatred.

137

138 FRANZ LISZT

Clara especially raged against the "smasher of pianos,"
whose greatest sin no doubt had been to dedicate him-
self to the glory of Wagner and not to that of her hus-
band. Even this must be qualified, for Liszt was again
the first one to give a concert devoted solely to the
works of Schumann, and he wrote an article that re-
mains famous on this pair of artists. But, as it was
difficult to contest his success as a pianist, it was neces-
sary to make him pay dear for that which he carried
off as a conductor.

After Lohengrin and Manfred, Liszt put on the
King Alfred of Raff, a rather genial, impecunious
young madcap whom for a long time he kept as his
secretary in order to have a pretext for serving him.
Then came the turn of Benvenuto Cellini, played for
the first time, without any success, in Paris, forty years
before. Lis^t took the piece up again, as he thought it
the freshest and best handled piece that Berlioz had
produced. The author was unable to be present, but
he addressed to Liszt the same words as Wagner: "I
Have faith in you alone." A few months later, Berlioz
having come to Weimar, Liszt organized in his honor
a Berlioz Week, in which were performed Cellini,
The Damnation of Faust, Romeo and Juliet, the Har-
old Symphony, the overtures of King Lear, Waverley
and The Captive. In spite of this, Berlioz, who took
little pleasure in this celebrity which to him seemed
posthumous, was hurt by the rising glory of Wagner.
He had suffered all his life from the delay of his popu-
larity. When he came on a third visit, he went to hear
Lohengrin, with the score in his hands, but he left the
box in the middle of the first act Liszt was not too

FRANZ LISZT 139

much disturbed by this, and the criticisms of his friend
had no effect upon him. "In the domain of the beauti-
ful," he said, "genius alone makes authority." The
Princess Wittgenstein knew how to soothe this immense
wounded pride. When he was spending the evening
with her at the Altenburg, and she asked him about his
works, Berlioz spoke of The Trojans. He allowed her
to see his discouragement; but the grandeur of the
plan aroused the enthusiasm of the Princess so much
that she cried: "If you shrink from the difficulties
which this work may and should cause you, if you are
weak enough to be afraid and not to dare everything
for Dido and Cassandra, you must never appear before
me again." This was just what the man needed. He
finished the work and dedicated it to her.

Such names and such enterprises would suffice to
make the renown of any stage. Liszt added to these
many others, like the Alfonso and Estrella of Schu-
bert, and the Flying Dutchman, all of them first per-
formances; the Fidelio of Beethoven (still scarcely
known) ; the Orpheus of Gliick and his Iphigenia,
Armide, Alcestus; all the operas of Mozart and Ros-
sini; the Euryanthus of Weber; Handel's Messiah and
Samson; Schumann's Paradise and the Peri; all of
Mendelssohn; the best of Spontini, Cherubini and
Halevy, not to mention the orchestral music. The
Ninth Symphony of Beethoven was played for the first
time, thanks to Liszt, in a number of towns of South-
ern Germany, Weimar, Carlsruhe, Mannheim and
elsewhere. It was regarded everywhere, in spite of its
half-rehabilitation by Wagner at Dresden (in 1846),
as a failure, the product of a deaf and deranged

140 FRANZ LISZT

hypochondriac. Now this work required, in the opin-
ion of Liszt, a progression in the accentuation, the
rhythm, the manner of phrasing and declaiming certain
passages, of setting off the lights and shadows, in a
word, a progression in the very style of the execution,
which was far from being realized by most of the or-
chestras. There, as elsewhere, the letter killed the
spirit. The true task of an orchestral conductor con-
sists not merely in managing the baton like an automa-
ton, but in feeling and penetrating works with intelli-
gence "and embracing all hearts in a sort of com-
munion of the beautiful, the grand and the true, of art
and poetry." According to him, the conductor should
render himself ostensibly almost useless. "We are
pilots, not laborers," he cried.

It was Liszt again who originated the Goethe Foun-
dation, a sort of artistic Olympian games, which were
to bring together once a year at Weimar the poets,
sculptors, painters and musicians of all the German
states. But this project, encouraged at first by the
court, "died at birth" after having cost its author a
long and laborious gestation. It was thanks to the
faith he received from Liszt, thanks to his encourage-
ment and his gifts of money, that Wagner preserved
the strength to struggle against an evil fate and work
at his Siegfried, paid for in advance, at Franz's en-
treaty, by the Grand Duke. "You ask me what I am
doing," Franz wrote to Carolyne. "Here is a little
statement of the things that have taken up my hours.
The Siegfried of Wagner, an affair that is now set-
tled. . . . Conversations and letters for the Goethe
Foundation. . . . Making final arrangements for defi-

FRANZ LISZT 141

nitely establishing our orchestra here in one or two
months ; arranging pensions, new engagements (the vio-
linist Joachim, among others), obtaining instruments.
. . . Rehearsals and performances of Lohengrin, La
Favorita, and, for this week, Fidelia and Robert le
Diable. Two concerts at the court, a third on Thurs-
day. Three or four lessons to the Grand Duchess.
. . . Sending off to Ha rtel (the publisher) two manu-
scripts, which I had to revise before I dispatched them.
Sending off Lohengrin to Brockhaus with the sugges-
tions you have given me. Copying the Poetic Har-
monies and the Fantasie of Schubert, which I must send
off soon. Correcting the proofs of the First Hungarian
Rhapsody and sending off the second along with my
Etudes."

All this accounts only for the material part of the
employment of his time what he called "the things
that have taken up my hours." Let me add the literary
works of this epoch : his big book on Chopin, his essays
on the Orpheus of Gliick, on Fidelio, Euryanthus, Ber-
lioz's Harold, Tannhauser, Lohengrin, the Flying
Dutchman, and Rheingold, his pamphlet on Mozart.
We can understand how this vigorous activity had
made Weimar the esoteric centre of music in Germany.
We understand, too, how the traditional criticism, that
which is called the "Conservatory" spirit, should have
proclaimed a holy war against the infidel. But the
most curious fact is not that Liszt, who was less and
less supported by his uneasy Grand Duke, should have
triumphed in spite of all. The really interesting thing
is the other tempo of the vital rhythm of this generous
blood.

142 FRANZ LISZT

In order to catch a glimpse of it one would have had
to climb up to the Altenburg, passing through a corner
of the Grand Ducal park. There, in the silence of an
old house, dwelt two hearts who communicated to-
gether through a music, imperceptible to the ear, which
only the soul heard.

"Let us not be torn from one another," was the con-
tinual cry of Franz to Carolyne and of Carolyne to
Franz. Strongly united as they were, the least absence
was a drama from which it seemed they would never
recover. A concert directed by Franz in some other
town, a visit of the Princess to some cure, a business
trip, instantly unloosed a passionate correspondence.
If they were merely surprised in their tete-a-tete by
the visit of some bore, they found a way to pass notes
behind his back. It was, above everything else, a
liaison of souls, the need of continually saying every-
thing, in spite of the inadequacy of human language,
as Bossuet expressed it. "Farewell till tomorrow^
strength, grandeur, approbation, reason of my being
and my existence," wrote Franz. "I ask myself if it
is not you who once made me a gift of my eyes and my
hands, and if, every evening, you do not wind up the
works of my heart." . . . "My first prayer, the first
breath of my soul, is for you." . . . "You are un-
ceasingly and everywhere present, through those mys-
terious emanations of the heart that bind us to one
another." . . . "Farewell, my beautiful eyes and my
beautiful eagle's clutch."

Such was the nature of a love which, during many
years, kept itself unchanged. Labor, faith, the hope of
marrying each other preserved it ; the hope, so dazzling

FRANZ LISZT 143

that it was almost morbid, of belonging to each other
before the law. On their arrival at Weimar they had
lived at first apart, Franz at the Hotel Erbprinz, while
the Princess established herself at the Altenburg. Be-
cause of the court, they had to observe a good deal of
discretion. For the rest, the Grand Duchesses closed
their eyes with evident satisfaction and even received
the Princess informally. But the lovers soon realized
that, on the Russian side, things were not going accord-
ing to their taste. The Czar, beset by the entire Witt-
genstein family and anxious to preserve an immense
property for one of his officers, absolutely opposed a
divorce, both in his official capacity and as supreme
head of the Church. Carolyne then decided to go to
law. The Dowager Grand Duchess tried to intervene
with her brother in the name of morality. But it was
hardly a question of morality. All their efforts were in
vain; so Franz one day took it upon himself to re-
nounce the whole comedy and move to the Altenburg.
This caused no smiles, so accustomed was everyone to
seeing them together.

They divided this substantial building between them.
The Princess and her daughter occupied the main suite
of apartments and Franz a little wing that opened on
the garden. They established themselves with a child-
ish joy, mingling their possessions and their destinies.
Tfie great salon received Franz's Viennese concert-
piano and a good part of his musical library. On the
walls were a few portraits of composers, medallions
of Berlioz, Wagner, and the ungrateful Schumann.
Above the door, a humorous drawing represented
cupids juggling with musical notes; it was from the

144 FRANZ LISZT

hand of Bettina von Arnim and bore the dedication,
"Elgen Franz Liszt!" All by itself, overhanging the
piano, the original impression of the mask of the dead
Beethoven.

In the adjoining room were the panoplies of arms
given to Liszt in honor of no one knows what by the
great Russian lords and the pashas. A whole museum
of Turkish objects, mother-of-pearl tables, coffee-
services, Oriental rugs and pipes. A single portrait,
that of the best-loved friend, Lichnowsky, assassinated
at Frankfort by the revolutionists of '48. On the floor
above was the music-room proper. It contained the
Erard preferred by the pianist and the gigantic instru-
ment constructed under his direction by the house of
Alexandre and Son of Paris, a combination of a piano
and an organ. Fitted with three keyboards, six regis-
ters, a foot-board and a system of pipes which repro-
duced all the wind-instruments, this epitome of an or-
chestra was the only one of its kind. It was called the
piano-melodium. (Liszt was already haunted by the
thought of discovering or inventing new sound-combina-
tions.) Just beside it, and like a dwarf child of this
monster, was a precious relic, the piano of Mozart.

The library was the sacred ark. Here were two
more instruments: an Erard and a Broadwood. On
the shelves, the books given him by his friends in the
old days, Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Lamartine, Lamennais.
A cupboard with glass doors contained autograph
scores by Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and al-
most all those of Wagner. As for the Broadwood, it
was never opened save by Liszt alone, once or twice
a year, for the Princess and the rarest friends, for it

FRANZ LISZT 145

was Beethoven's piano, the last on which he had played
before his death.

One had to go out into the court and climb a little
wooden stairway to reach Liszt's apartment. This
consisted of two rooms: the study, called the blue
chamber, and the room where he slept. This blue
chamber was square, with a low ceiling, and had a view
over the garden. It was furnished for work : a piano,
a desk, a table, a few chairs upholstered in light cre-
tonnes. On the wall, two engravings : Diirer's Melan-
choly and a drawing representing Saint Francis de Paul
walking on the waves. It was to the blue chamber they
brought his breakfast in the morning. Scarcely was it
placed on the table when the Princess arrived by a nar-
row corridor that bound the great house into one. But
before taking their cafe au lait, they collected their
thoughts together in the tiny oratory where there was
just room for their twin prie-dieu. A love entirely
drawn from devotion, a beautiful faith, which was
never debated between them. On the table, a Pascal,
which Franz often opened. One day, when he had
joist read a few pages, he summed up on a margin of the
book his whole theology: "If it were established that
all the metaphysical proofs in support of the existence
of God were reduced to nothing by the arguments of
philosophy, would still remain One, absolutely invinci-
ble. The affirmation of God through our lamenta-
tions, the need we have for Him, the aspiration of our
souls towards His love : this suffices for me, and I do
not have to ask for it to remain a believer to the last
breath of my life." Mysticism of the artist. Inner
poetry. Respect for suffering. Faith was in him the

146 FRANZ LISZT

surest adjuvant of love. A sentiment very like that
which Delacroix uttered at this same time: "I have a
great love for churches. ... It is as if they were
adorned with all the prayers that suffering hearts have
breathed towards heaven."

-It was during this first Weimar period (1848-1860)
that Liszt produced most of his works and those that
are most important : the twelve Symphonic Poems, the
Sonata in B-Minor f the Faust-Symphony, the Mass of
Gran, the Dante-Symphony and the greater number of
his songs. A magnificent mass of work, piled up in
twelve years, thanks undoubtedly to the Amazon of
Woronince. Her firm hand, armed with a cigar and
a pencil, guided with a marvellous sureness the big,
nervous thoroughbred which it trained for the daily
work.

He began with a symphonic poem : What One Hears
on a Mountain, sketched in Podolia after Victor Hugo.
Symbolism for two voices; "the one expressing Nature,
the other Humanity." But, unlike the sort of pro-
gramme music that had preceded it in Beethoven and
Berlioz, Liszt's poem was not a picture but a story, an
exposition of feeling. Too often this eludes the orches-
tral conductors and the pianists who give the same
value to sonorous arabesques that they give to a mel-
ody. Here, as in most of his works, Liszt seeks above
everything the progress of a thought upon which he
concentrates the interest of its developments. "The
Spirit," he said, "must breathe upon these sonorous
waves as upon the great waters of Creation."

His Tasso (lamento e tribnfo), more subtle in its in-
spiration, expresses still better this tragedy of the

FRANZ LISZT 147

intellectual shades. Solitude is the first of the visionary
tastes of the poet, the initial phase of an unending
lamentation provoked by the discovery that his own
nature is like Tasso's prison-house. One is born in an
inclosed universe from which it becomes increasingly
impossible to escape. But everyone has his Ferrara,
that is the experience of perceiving form and feeling
by means of love. For a brief space, all is delight,
dancing, amusement. For one chooses one's Leonore
beauty, stupidity, or simple pleasure in order to
place happiness beyond one's reach, to withdraw it
from one's consciousness so that it becomes solely the
source of spiritual ardor. But the reason is disturbed
by these feverish melancholies. There comes, how-
ever, for Tasso, as for those who are able to remain
faithful to their sorrows, a far-distant glory that rises
over the ruins. The lamentations of the madman are
acclaimed after his death.

It was while he was interpreting the poet's story that
Liszt became aware of the extent to which his own real
musical destiny lay stifled beneath the outward pomp
and success of his life. Is that why the Funeral
Hero'ide is dedicated to sorrow? There was still an-
other reason. In the procession of mourners, is the
tocsin of the Revolution, is mingled the funeral knell
of two very dear friends who died this very year '49,
only a few months apart, Lichnowsky and Chopin. At-
tacked by the brass instruments, the knell is prolonged
in a terrifying unison of all the stringed instruments in
which this great inventor of dissonances expresses the
incompleteness of the perfect, the terror of the light
as well as the terror of death. This prolonged fanfare

148 FRANZ LISZT

bursts forth too brightly, too convincingly, like a Last
Judgment. One might almost call it an ode to the joy
of dying through excess of light, like a crystal that is
broken under the afflux of sympathetic vibrations.

To this lure of the abyss is opposed Mazeppa, with
its progressive coloration, derived rather from Dela-
croix than from Victor Hugo. It is a ballad in two
songs, constructed on a single motif, in which it is less
important for us to trace the legend of the Knight
"bound to the fatal croup" of the unreal than to aban-
don ourselves to the vigorous life of the music itself.
This power, in its immediacy, can be really enjoyed only
by the mind of an artist, so naked is it, so stripped of
all literature. The extreme division of the orchestra,
the multitude of its details, extends so far that one loses
the central idea, which seems to melt into space. But
gradually it reappears, powerfully brought together
again, to finish its course in a march the rhythm of
which dominates with an irresistible force all its fan-
tasies. "Mazeppa," wrote Wagner to Liszt, "is ad-
mirably beautiful all the same ; when I ran through it
the first time I gasped for breath. The poor horse
made me unhappy: Nature and the world are still a
terrible thing. Your works taken together seem to me
in a way like an incarnation of your personal superior-
ity; that is why they are so new, so incomparable, that
it will be a long time before criticism knows how to
classify them.'*

To the same intellectual source must be assigned the
Prometheus, which Liszt described in this way: "Sor-
row and glory summed up thus, the fundamental
thought of this too veracious fable lends itself only to

FRANZ LISZT 149

a tempestuous form of expression. ... A triumphant
desolation through the perseverance of a proud energy
forms the musical character of this theme." Plunging
further into the perilous search for a concrete work of
art based on pure sensations, Liszt declares that he has
only tried to convey "elements as devoid of body as
they are eternal in feeling." This almost Mallarmeean
tour d 9 esprit led him soon after to the most poetic
of his inspirations, the Bruits de Fete. They have no
inscription. They are as unexplained as joy. And that
is precisely what they are : the rejoicings of the soul.
Liszt and Carolyne, in their blue room at the Alten-
burg, had dedicated themselves to their love, of which
this composition was the epithalamium. It was to have
been their wedding music. Liszt had sketched it while
on a visit to Eilsen, in the summer of '51, at a moment
when their plan seemed to be going favorably. Among
all his poems, he loved this one especially, for at its
heart was embodied, in the form of a Polonaise, the
musical portrait of Carolyne.

It was while studying Gluck's Orpheus with the
orchestra at Weimar that he conceived the idea of
writing his own. He recalled a vase in the Louvre
which showed Orpheus, his brow bound with the mystic
fillet, a mantle of stars over his shoulders, the lyre
in his hands, his lips open to sing. He was mourning
for Eurydice; but, if the gods permitted him to snatch
her for an instant from the shades of the subterranean
world, it was not to grant her more than a brief mo-
ment of life. A beautiful combination of harps, a
horn and violoncellos evokes this classic symbol of the
ideal vanishing in misfortune and sorrow.

150 FRANZ LISZT

If in Orpheus the "programme" has its typical value
in illustrating a legend, the Preludes again are a paint-
ing of the inner life, a meditation on this theme of
Lamartine : "Is our life anything but a series of Pre-
ludes to that unknown song of which death intones the
first and solemn note?" So the need for carefully
shaping forms alternates in the artist with the need
for tracing ideas.

Hungana is explained by its name : a national fresco
on the model of the great decorations of KauIBach. A
piece written to order, official architecture, built on
four themes like the gateway to a festival. Kaulbach,
to whom Liszt was personally attached, had shown him
one of those vast compositions which people so admired
during the romantic period and from which the musi-
cian at once received the suggestion for his Battle of
the Huns. Together with What One Hears on the
Mountain, it forms a diptych, one of the poems denot-
ing the conflict between spirit and matter, the other the
struggle between Christianity and Paganism. Musi-
cally, however, the texture is very different in the two
parts. The battle opens under a dark, lowering sky.
The cavalcade of Huns sweeps by in a rhythm from
which Wagner was to derive the first gallop of his
Walkiires' ride : just as, it may be said in passing, he
found a number of the grandest sonorities of the Twi-
light of the Gods in the Sonata in B-Minor and many
of his other richest harmonies in the works of this
friend who was so richly endowed and so modest. Not
that this is of any great importance. Liszt's generosity
never impoverished him, and Wagner could well afford
to take lightly everything he borrowed from him: he

FRANZ LISZT 151

has richly repaid the debt to us. Echoing with cries,
trampled by terrible armies, the fields soon resound
with the first Christian chant. The banners of the
Church, in the midst of this melee, are hurled against
the square commanded by Attila. But the Goths tri-
umph. The "meteoric and solar" light shining from
the cross suddenly dissipates the shadow, and the Crux
fidelis, beginning pianissimo on the organ, spreads over
the whole finale with a mounting grandeur.

Along with this pictorial romanticism, there was a
literary subject of equal amplitude that could not fail
to attract Liszt. After Hugo, Lamartine, Dante, he
must of necessity have turned to Shakespeare. There
is this resource in Shakespeare: that anyone who is
weary of his state of spiritual dryness is certain to find
in this father of love a new poetic baptism, is sure of
being rejuvenated, of opening a whole library of sensa-
tions. This universe is certain to endure through the
perfection of its equilibrium. Liszt attacked the su-
preme subject, the simplest and the most complicated:
Hamlet. And, as always happens when a man studies
this summary of the whole human problem, he confined
himself to very brief, very condensed comments. Of
the twelve symphonic scores, Hamlet is the shortest:
fifty pages in all. For, with an admirable sureness of
judgment, Liszt goes straight to the essential themes :
the monologue, Ophelia, and the mock-madness of
him for whom even his mother's heart is nothing but
a "rhapsody of words." By a double introduction of
oboes and flutes, clarinets and bassoons, Liszt pre-
sents the question to be or not to be and follows it
with a solo on the horn emphasized by an accompani-

152 FRANZ LISZT

ment of kettle-drums suggesting with extraordinary
distinctness the uncertainty of the spirit. Then follow
the thoughts, intersecting one another in a constantly
more dense orchestration which culminates in an alle-
gro appassionato, rising to the point of despair. But
without pathos, without drama, a cold crescendo, pro-
cured by a simple rhythmical contraction, the 4/45
becoming 3/48 without any thematic change, just at
the moment when the image of Ophelia, described in
fifty-eight measures, "ironically" crosses the mind (the
artist himself wrote the word at the head of the alle-
gro). Four times, as in Shakespeare, the motif of the
ghost appears, then vanishes. And at each of these
appeals the themes of despair and uncertainty are re-
vived. Everything dies away on the question posed
at the outset, and, in spite of a contrapuntal interpreta-
tion of striking richness, it remains insoluble and in
suspense.

The last of the symphonic poems borrows its title
and its character from the poem of Schiller : Die Ideale.
Liszt has chosen here three episodes of the soul, three
"stimmungen," to use the consecrated word: enthu-
siasm, that of youth which bears in itself the best of
the human genius, disillusion, and, lastly, creation, or
perhaps one might say more justly the will to create.
More than any other, this composition seems to burst
forth full of life from the well-spring of him for whom
the inspired, or visionary, state, consisting of a certain
inner plenitude or perfection, of expressive force, was
the most constant condition of the artist. It is less joy
than confidence, less love than an exquisite candor.
Here, as elsewhere, the spirited brilliancy of Liszt's

FRANZ LISZT 153

sonorities is above everything limpidly naive, naive in
the desirable meaning of the word, the naivete of a
soul always convinced that 4 'beauty is the shining of
truth." Faith is decidedly the major sign of this tem-
perament, in daily communion of the feelings with God.
"I went to Joachim's," he writes. "He played by
chance one of the last quartettes of Beethoven in A,
of which the adagio was described as 'Canzone di
ringraziamento alia Divinita d'un guarito. 9 That was
a veritable sacrament for me. I wept, I prayed. . . .
I should have liked to have my day end there." Die
Ideale is an act of faith and joy from the depths of
the difficult years. On the one hand, the marriage with
Carolyne, so long hoped for, had proved to be impossi-
ble. On the other hand, the public turned a closed
and hostile ear to the audacities of the forerunner.
Even that little friendly court of Weimar began to
withdraw from the solitary of the Altenburg, who
would agree to no concessions where his apostolic mis-
sion was involved.

These obstacles, however, served to excite his crea-
tive faculties, for two more major works must be set
down to this period of flow and energy: the Sonata in
B-Minor and the Faust-Symphony. The love of a
woman sustained him in the task of remaining faithful
to himself. And the friendship of Wagner. He had
grounds enough for feeling himself justified in such a
eulogy as this: "Your appeal To Artists" a male
chorus, by Liszt, occurring in Die Ideale "is a great,
beautiful and admirable gesture of your true life as an
artist. I have been profoundly moved by the power
of your purpose. You express it with passion, in an

154 FRANZ LISZT

epoch and under such circumstances that men would do
well to try to understand you. I do not know a soul
today who would be capable of doing anything like it,
of doing it with such power. My good friend, you
should have singers such as I have dreamed of for my
Wotan. So reflect on what I have said to you. I have
become so abominably practical that I am always think-
ing of the production : that is a new source of the lux-
urious despair in which I delight. Thanks, therefore,
for the Artists. I am almost ready to believe that you
have given it to me alone, and that no one else will ever
know what you have given to the world."

The dedication of the Symphonic Poems was never-
theless reserved for her who, on the evening of the con-
cert at Kiev, had silently dedicated her life to him.
On her birthday, a certain eighth of February, when
she entered the blue room, the Princess found the
precious scores, exquisitely bound, lying on the work-
table where they had their coffee. In his large, childish
handwriting, Franz had given them this dedication :

"To her who has fulfilled her faith through love
whose hope has grown greater in the midst of sorrow
who has built her happiness upon sacrifice. To her
who remains the companion of my life, the firmament
of my mind, the living prayer and the Heaven of my
soul to Jeanne Elizabeth Carolyne."

XVIII

FOUR years had passed since Liszt and Wagner had
seen each other when, in the first days of July, 1853,
Franz was at last able to set out for Zurich. His
pockets were full of the latest letters of the friend who
was waiting for him, growing impatient for him, so
imperious was the need he felt of unbosoming his heart
and mind. These two men had established their affec-
tion in a universe where it developed under the sign of
the ideal. It dominated them ; it dominated their every
day. It was consubstantial with their souls. Even
Wagner's growing passion for Mathilde Wesendonck
and that of Liszt for Carolyne did not rise to these
Platonic regions of the heavenly Aphrodite. "Far or
near, each one remembers the one he has chosen," said
Diotima to Socrates, "and by constant communion with
the beloved fosters the fruit of his own soul." "Let
us remain faithful to each other," thought Liszt,
"though the world should perish."

From seven o'clock in the morning Wagner had been
waiting for Liszt in front of the post-station. They
smothered each other with their embraces. Wagner
wept, laughed, in a storm of joy. "There were some-
times the cries of a young eagle in his voice." Liszt
scrutinized him eagerly and found him looking well,
although thin. His features, especially the nose and
the mouth, had taken on a remarkable fineness and ex-
pressiveness. He was dressed with a certain amount

155

156 FRANZ LISZT

of care. They set off at once for Wagner's rooms,
a comfortable apartment on the second floor of one of
the old houses of Zurich, the Escher house. New
furniture had just been bought, and Liszt was de-
lighted with these little elegances : a sofa, an armchair
in green velvet, a beautiful piano, and the scores of
Rienzi, Tannhduser, and Lohengrin, bound in red mo-
rocco. Madame Wagner was there, stout, not hand-
some, but well-mannered and obliging; she herself did
the cooking for the two friends. Her husband was so
excited that, twenty times a day, he threw himself on
Franz's neck, sprawled on the floor to pat his dog,
flung himself at the piano and, not being able to sing
himself, made his parrot whistle a motif from Rienzi.
He attacked the great questions :

"Art is nothing but elegy," he said, developing his
favorite theme of the sufferings of the artist.
"Yes, and God crucified is a truth," replied Liszt.
Lohengrin, Tannhduser, Siegfried, inexhaustible
subjects. Wagner's voice faltered whenever he thought
and spoke of the tireless activity Franz had devoted to
making his works known.

"Just see what you have made of me; it is to you
alone that I owe the little I am."

And he threw himself again in his arms. Then
Liszt sat down at the keyboard and played the duet of
Lohengrin and Elsa, which they sang together from
one end to the other. Wagner decided to keep open
house during Franz's visit. Nothing was magnificent
enough for him. He was soon declaiming passages
from Rheingold to which his friend listened with over-
flowing surprise. What force in this quivering little

FRANZ LISZT 157

man ! "A great, a very great nature, something like a
firework Vesuvius, shooting forth sheaves of flames and
bouquets of roses and lilacs."

In the evening, they went to see the poet Herwegh,
who lived in a house on the lake-shore where he shut
himself up like Faust in a laboratory filled with books,
optical instruments and chemical retorts. Together
they planned to take an excursion on the Lake of Lu-
cerne. The following day, however, was reserved for
a solemn event : the reading of the Nibelungen. Wag-
ner began this early in the afternoon. He read with
incredible energy. The few friends gathered in the
Escher house were fascinated, as much by the beauty
of the poem itself as by this accentuated diction.

"Nothing remains now but for me to write the
music," he said, as Racine remarked that nothing re-
mained for him to do but to make the verses of a
tragedy which he had entirely thought out. They
launched out into comments on the composer's recent
book, Opera and Drama. And Wagner spoke for the
first time of a magnificent project, that of founding
an art theatre, a Biihnenfestspiel, where his four-day
drama would be presented. The idea entranced Liszt :
"There isn't the slightest doubt of it, we must find the
necessary hundred thousand francs and persuade the
Grand Duke to offer you Weimar."

Herwegh and the two musicians embarked one after-
noon on the steamboat on the Lake of Zurich for Brun-
nen, on the Lake of the Four Cantons. After a two
hours' crossing and four or five hours in a carriage,
they reached this village towards evening, and at dawn
the next day they were carried by boat to Grutli and

158 FRANZ LISZT

the chapel of William Tell. Three streams ran from
the rocks, and Liszt had set his heart upon having them
all swear an oath modelled on that of the three Swiss.
Each of them drank from the hollowed hand of his
friend as they all swore fraternity. Schmollis and
Bruderschaft. But they had to ratify this at once by
some great decision. Franz thereupon told Herwegh
of a plan for an oratorio, Chrlstus, and begged him to
compose the poem.

These friendly festivities lasted only one short week.
He had to return to Weimar where the Grand Duke
had just died, leaving his succession to Karl Alexander.
Wagner and Herwegh accompanied Liszt to the mail-
coach, and as soon as he reached home Richard poured
himself out in a letter to the friend from whom he
had just parted: "After seeing ourselves torn from one
another, I could not say another word to George. I
returned home. Everywhere silence reigned. It was
thus your departure has been commemorated, my dear
friend. All joy has fled from us. Oh, come back soon !
Make us a long visit. If you knew what divine traces
you have left here. Everything has become nobler and
sweeter; great aspirations reawaken in repressed
hearts, and melancholy comes to cover everything with
its veil. Adieu, my Franz, my Saint Francis. . . ."

On the outside of the diligence, Saint Francis is en-
veloped in his cloak, and, worn out after this week of
late hours, he falls asleep leaning against the shoulder
of his servant.

There are no stimulants for the artist more energiz-
ing than love and friendship. After his return, Liszt
felt the need of writing notes to preserve his equilib-

FRANZ LISZT 159

rium. He had a sense of desiccation when he had
passed several days without his music-paper. His brain
was congested and he was incapable of taking any pleas-
ure in external things. "Music is the breath of my soul ;
it has become at once my prayer and my work." So
he composed; he was in a fever of creation, and he
consumed his surplus of ideas in founding, with his
friends Brendel, Ritter, the poet Herwegh and Cor-
nelius, a magazine of art. Richard was to be its
Messiah, for from now on the whole stream of the
Zukunfts-Musik (music of the future) turned about
this advanced and solitary Pharos. And, although
Wagner, unwilling to mingle with trifling literature,
excused himself, he remained in spite of himself the
"concentric focus" where the eyes of the new school
converged. Liszt, who had experienced so keenly, even
in his metaphysical being, the Wagnerian fever, that
inspiring malady of the spirit, was now ravaged by
it beyond any hope of recovery, any possible change
of mind. ^Through Wagner, modernity speaks its
most intimate language : it does not conceal either its
good or its evil, it has forgotten all sharne in its own
presence. I understand perfectly when a musician of
today says to us: C I hate Wagner, but I can't bear
any other music any longer.' But I also understand a
philosopher who declared : 'Wagner sums up modern-
ity. Try as one may, one has to begin by being Wag-
nerian.' " So spoke Nietzsche. Liszt, completely anti-
philosophical, was Wagnerian by divine right, by rev-
elation, by the laying on of hands, by his profound
feeling for religion, by his tenderness for Carolyne.
In his Wagnerism there was the memory of love the
deliverer. It was a chapel dedicated to the ideal in

160 FRANZ LISZT

the cathedral of sounds. The other musicians were
no longer anything but minor saints, good and holy
workers of small miracles, compared with the Prophet
who struck from the rock the spring of the new gospel :
that of regeneration through art. Nietzsche cried
Decadence and Liszt Redemption. Redemption, since
Wagnerism was not only music but wisdom and love
also. The "musical drama" united everything, life
itself. The new birth which Lamennais had in view
in his mystic transports, Wagner brought about first
through art. His Credo rested on the conviction that
the world has a moral significance and that its destinies
are fixed outside of space and time. His doctrine
springs entirely from this faith. Of what importance
are temporal goods, the progress of mechanics, the
accumulation of scientific knowledge. Thanks to them,
not one tear the less falls into the ocean of the miseries
of man. Humanity can well go to ruin, if only this
ruin is divine. "Even though the state produced by the
regeneration of the human race should be as serene
as one could wish, thanks to the appeasement of our
conscience, we must not forget that we should still be
aware of the frightful tragedy of universal existence
in the natural world about us. Therefore we must
indeed lift our eyes each day to the crucified Redeemer
as to our last and supreme refuge."

For the artist, the essential question, the only one
perhaps, is to achieve harmony within himself. So
long as he has not solved the inner problem, his genius
is chiefly a danger to him. Not having mastered its
language, he runs the risk of expressing himself falsely,
and this, in a sincere man, is the capital sin. Up to

FRANZ LISZT 161

the day when Franz opened Tannhauser, this accord
with himself had remained imperfect. Since then,
the complementary note had suddenly rung out, giving
his voice its own individual tone. What had he to
fear from this last change? The composer in him had
reached a complete development. It was the man who
still lacked a touch. But what power he had in music
belonged only to him, was derived only from himself.

Wagner and Liszt both stimulated each other so
fruitfully that they could not but decide to see each
other again soon. It was to be in October of this
same year, and they planned to have a lark together
in Paris. The Princess and her daughter were in-
cluded. And did not Franz have in Paris three chil-
dren whom he had not seen for many years? They
bore his name : it was he who paid for their bringing
up and provided for their needs. Seized with a sudden
desire to embrace them, he wrote to their governess
and arranged that the journey should immediately
follow the music festival which he was directing at
Carlsruhe. They were to meet on October 6 at Basle,
the Hotel of the Three Kings.

On the day arranged, Wagner, the first to arrive,
was sitting alone in the dining-room, watching the
Rhine flowing under the windows. Suddenly a vigor-
ous chorus burst forth. It was the motif of the fan-
fare in Lohengrin, the summons of the King, and the
double doors opened revealing Liszt, followed by a
group of disciples eager to see the master's master:
Hans von Biilow, Joachim, Cornelius, Pohl, Pruckner
and Remenyi. The Princess and her daughter soon
joined this gathering which, in spite of its familiar

162 FRANZ LISZT

air, had "a certain grandeur," Wagner thought, "like
everything that flowed from Liszt." The Princess
enraptured them with her vivacity and the interest
she showed in such exalted questions as the relations of
this general staff of the Zukunfts-Musik with the
world of Philistines. Her fifteen-year-old daughter
charmed them "by her dreamy air." To please her
(he had a weakness for this child who represented
the "wisdom of innocence"), Wagner yielded to the
pleasure of reciting his poem on the Nibelungen. And
as it could not be gone through in one evening, the
reading was continued in Paris, where Liszt, Wagner
and the two ladies arrived a few days later.

They all established themselves at the Hotel des
Princes. The first evening these gentlemen broke
away, paced up and down the boulevards, deserted at
this late hour, and revived old memories that were
very different. For the one, it was a pleasing collection
of swooning hearts and proffered lips ; for the other,
the barren poverty with Minna. They glanced at each
other clandestinely as they passed the Opera, where the
placard announced Robert le Diable. Liszt was the
elder: forty-two years. An almost miraculous life, a
European name, that face of a man-angel which always
attracted the thoughts of women, a career managed to
perfection, oscillating between the pleasure of living
and its justification through work. Wagner, younger
by two years, seemed older with that toil-worn mask
of his. He was the beginner compared with this great
man who had arrived. The work he bore within him
filled his head with a nervous hum.
Arm in arm, they walked through the rue du Helder,

FRANZ LISZT 163

passing the apartment where Wagner had composed
his Rienzi, the libretto of the Flying Dutchman and
(he had to eat once a day) the four Suites for the
Cornet. "Dear, dear Richard," said Franz, pressing
his arm. Even then the brightest note in Wagner's
fortune was the heart of Liszt. Before returning, they
pushed on to the rue de Provence and looked up at
the Mansard windows just under the roof of the lat-
ter's former lodgings. It was from up there that, one
evening in the summer of 1835, the lover of Marie
d'Agoult embarked on a little journey that was to last
for several weeks and that now, almost twenty years
later, was not yet finished.

Liszt scarcely gave a thought to Marie now save
to buy the third volume of her recent work on The
Revolution of Forty-Eight. She had truly made a
new name for herself with that patient energy of hers,
and one could not but marvel at the accuracy of the
prophecies of the sordid Lenormant. Nelida lived
in solitude, her heart at peace, in the beautiful intel-
lectual retreat which she had created. Plenty of
friends had remained faithful to her and came to see
her in her establishment in the Faubourg du Roule, the
Maison Rose : Sainte-Beuve, Lamennais, Girardin, La-
martine, the good, pathetic Ronchaud, the cold Count
de Vigny, that "national monument" the poet Mickie-
wicz,

Franz learned all this from Mme. Patersi, his chil-
dren's teacher. He was very happy and a little em-
barrassed when, after a moment of conversation with
her, the door opened and he had to kiss the foreheads
of two young girls of fifteen and eighteen. His daugh-

164 FRANZ LISZT

ters, and beautiful into the bargain ! One more success
as a man ! He began a little flirtation with these un-
known creatures, perfectly brought up and, the younger
one especially, excellent musicians. His friends must
have a share in this gratifying adventure.

One evening Wagner was presented to the Demoi-
selles Liszt, and they made him read the last act of
the Twilight of the Gods. In the middle of the recita-
tion there was another ring at the bell. It was M.
Berlioz this time, a dry little man, rather stiff, whom
Liszt had also invited. Wagner and he shook hands
without too much sympathy, and the declamation con-
tinued. Berlioz listened and probably understood none
of it, but nevertheless his shrivelled face tried to be
amiable. He invited Franz and his friend to breakfast
the following day, for he was about to set off for a
concert tour in Germany.

So they met again in his little apartment in the
rue Boursault. In spite of his poverty and his anxieties
(Ophelia had been agonizing for weeks in a little
house at Montmartre), Berlioz, always by some inner
necessity boastful, kept up a rapid fire of puns, indulged
in fireworks and predicted his own triumph in Ger-
many. After the dessert, Liszt sat down at the piano
and played fragments of Cellini, which Berlioz sang
in his dry, original way. The extraordinary and
savage character of Berlioz's conceptions, the intensity
of the sensations and certain curious weaknesses pro-
duced upon Wagner a mixed but profound impression.
Behind all these things there was certainly a man of
great value, almost an equal. And there was Liszt, the
author of the Sonata In B-Minor, the dear, the

FRANZ LISZT 165

delicious Liszt, spending himself with all his might ex-
alting the music of Berlioz.

One evening of course had to be spent at the opera.
Wagner got into his clothes without enthusiasm, and
once they were there all the women turned to look at
Franz. In the green-room they found a few faces they
knew and other memories they had forgotten. Wagner
recalled the unfortunate hearing of his Defense d* aimer
by Scribe in this same green-room; Liszt, the ridiculous
occasion of his Castle of Love. A more stimulating
impression was that left upon Wagner by the Morin-
Chevillard Quartette Society. "In Paris alone," he
tells us, "I learned really to know the Quartette in C-
sharp-Minor of Beethoven, and for the first time I
clearly understood his melody. If this visit had left
me only this one memory, it would have sufficed to
make this epoch important and unforgettable."
Henceforth he regarded the scherzo of this quartette
as the greatest masterpiece in all music. This expe-
rience forms a pendant to his initiation into the Ninth
Symphony, received fourteen years earlier at the Con-
servatory concerts. It was then that "the image di-
vined in his youthful dreams" had first dawned upon
him, and "the decadent period of his taste had come
to an end in shame and repentance."

Franz arranged another dinner at the Palais-Royal
at which his three children appeared. Daniel struck
everyone by his vivacity and his great resemblance to
his father. The young girls sat close beside each other,
like two frightened doves.

All too soon, however, he was obliged to set out
again for Weimar, and once more for Wagner the

166 FRANZ LISZT

farewell was like a rending of the heart. Liszt carried
home with him Carolyne and the Princess Marie, called
Magne, or Magnolette, who was the same age as
Cosima and of whom he was very fond. He had
scarcely reached the Altenburg when the first letter
arrived from Wagner, who was remaining a few days
longer in Paris. "Behold me still following you with
a fixed eye. My whole being is silence. You must
permit me, even when I am with you, to dispense with
seeking for words. Language seems to me to exist
only to do violence to one's feelings. And so, no
constraint, but silence . . . Ah! I am all feeling, so
much so that the mind in me is lost in the heart ; and
the things of the heart I cannot write to you."

As for the Mademoiselles Liszt, they had adopted
this strange friend whom chance had given to them.
And a few days later, on October 22 (a sacred date,
for it was the anniversary of their father's birth), he
invited them to Erard's, where they found a few friends
assembled. There was a concert piano wide open.
The gathering was to celebrate the best-beloved, the
saint of saints, Saint Francis Liszt. Consequently, he
was going to play the most beautiful thing he knew.
He attacked Tannhauser.

XIX

OF the ten or so disciples who surrounded the master
of Weimar at the Altenburg, one was especially be-
loved: Hans von Bulow. This young man had been
introduced to him by Wagner. He had come from
Switzerland in the spring of 1851, without a penny,
strong in his single vocation for music. Having de-
serted Berlin, his family and his studies at the law,
Biilow had first hunted out the exile at Zurich, who
had amused himself by lending him for a short while a
conductor's baton. The experiment succeeded. Bulow
not only had a genius for the orchestra, but at the
mere contact with Wagner his whole being was exalted.
The will of this young enthusiast triumphed first over
the technical difficulties, then over the resistance of his
family. So they sent him to Liszt, begging the latter
to determine whether he should be a pianist, kapell-
meister or composer. Liszt declared that he should be
a pianist, and established this new pupil in his house.

He had not been mistaken. In two years, Billow
became a pianist of the first rank; more, an incompa-
rable friend, one of those faithful and devoted souls
tEat spring up around great men. The name of Bulow
soon began to be known throughout Germany as that
of one of the best artists, one of the boldest too, be-
cause of his programmes, in which the works of the
new masters never failed to figure. He went about
stirring up the orchestra conductors, combating the

167

168 FRANZ LISZT

recalcitrants, imposing on them Wagner's operas or
the symphonic poems of Liszt and quickly becoming
the foremost ambassador of that violent little race, the
"musicians of the future." He was an impulsive crea-
ture, now at the Eeight of good spirits, now utterly
cast down, a sarcastic, correct soul, a very well-brought-
up young German. Of the coterie at the Altenburg, it
was he who spoke the best French, an indispensable
qualification for following the conversations of the
Princess and Liszt, who always talked together in this
tongue. By zealous effort, he reached the point where
he too could express himself gracefully and easily in
it. "Accept the reiterated expression of my profound
gratitude for all the kindnesses you have heaped upon
me," he wrote to Liszt at the opening of the year
1854. "Pray count upon my entire devotion, body and
soul, to your person, and make use of it if the occasion
presents itself some day. In recapitulating the last
year, so rich in events for my career as man and
artist ... in reflecting on my future and the progress
I have been able to make towards this future, I am
filled through and through, not with a feeling of
wounded self-esteem, but on the contrary with the live-
liest pride, when I recognize that the best I have in
me is the creation of the divine breath of your art."
This was a first expression of the thanksgivings this
faithful among the faithful chanted to his God. Hans
von Billow was soon appointed first professor of piano
music at the Conservatory in Berlin, where he settled
with his mother.

It then occurred to the Princess Wittgenstein to
bring Liszt and his daughters together, and she advised

FRANZ LISZT 169

him to place them as boarders with Frau von Biilow.
They were living such solitary lives in Paris, where
Mme. d'Agoult could scarcely see them except clandes-
tinely, that they accepted without too much displeasure
this change in their destiny. On August 22, 1855,
they arrived at the Altenburg and found their father
playing whist. (The Princess had just left, in her turn,
for Paris.) The family flirtation began again, as once
before in the rue Casimir-Perier. The first night they
chattered till half past one. Liszt kept his mornings
absolutely to himself to work on his Psalm and remain
faithful to the routine of composition he had estab-
lished. For several weeks the daily programme was
devoted to walks, readings and games. But, before
going to bed, Franz faithfully wrote his daily letter
to that infinitely dear mistress whom he guided from
afar in her visits to the old friends in France: De-
lacroix, Ary Scheffer, George Sand, Sainte-Beuve.
Frau von Biilow came in search of these young ladies
in September and carried them off to Berlin. It was
understood that Hans was to take charge of their musi-
cal instruction, and Liszt enjoined him to make them
work seriously. He had found them further advanced
than he thought, though rather given to day-dreaming.
They must be made good propagandists for the
Zukunfts-Musik. Hans did not fail to do so, as we
may judge from the following:

"My very dear and illustrious master, a thousand thanks for
the happiness you have brought me by sending me your Psalm.
It is a sublime work: it is you who are the true founder of
the Zukunfts-Kirchenmusik, and I bow before the author of

170 FRANZ LISZT

this masterpiece which, by its nobility and its sincere and
profound religious spirit, cannot fail to deliver its message to
whosoever approaches it with a little intelligence and without
too materialistic a soul . . . You ask me, my dear master, to
give you the news of Miles. Liszt. Up to the present this
would have been impossible owing to the state of stupefaction,
admiration and even exaltation to which they have reduced me,
especially the younger. As for their musical ability, it is not
talent but genius . . . Last evening, Mile. Blandine played
Bach's Sonata in A, and Mile. Cosima Beethoven's Sonata in
E-flat. I make them work also at four-hand arrangements of
instrumental works for the piano. I analyze the pieces for
them, and I put too much rather than too little pedantry into
my surveillance over their studies ... I shall never forget
the delicious evening when I played and played again your
Psalm to them. The two angels were almost on their knees
and are overwhelmed with adoration for their father. They
understand your masterpieces better than anyone else, and truly
you have in them a public bestowed on you by nature. How
moved and touched I was in recognizing you, ipsissimum, Liszt,
in the playing of Mile. Cosima."

Meanwhile, after an interregnum of several months
devoted to journeys and composition, Liszt had taken
up again his conductor's baton at the Weimar theatre.
Although he could never hope for more than slight
results in this small and rather dull town, he yet
persisted in forcing upon it the works of his own
choice : Wagner's Flying Dutchman, Tannhauser and
Lohengrin, and Cellini and William Tell. The court
was still in mourning, a fact that was apparent in the
many empty stalls. But Liszt did not allow himself
to be disheartened by the indifference and the criticism

FRANZ LISZT 171

that had succeeded the enthusiasm of the first years.
He had faith in his art, in Wagner, in himself. This
was enough. Just at this time he had received from
Zurich the first two acts of Die Walkure, which he
thought miraculous. All Germany might pronounce
them anathema, but this could not affect the friend
shut up in his room in Switzerland like a silk-worrn in
its cocoon. The friend who was working. And strug-
gling; for all he had to live on were the meagre sums
that dribbled in from the few scattered productions
of his operas. He still sometimes abandoned himself
to despair: "Often I suddenly feel that when all is
said and done the best thing for me would be to die."
But immediately after: "Ah! this has nothing to do
with the music that I have to write." Liszt hastened
to Leipzig, stimulated the zeal of a manager, besieged
his friend's publishers, went the rounds of the patrons
of art in Dresden and ended by sending from his own
pocket the money that no one could make up his mind
to advance. "Everything that was possible is done;
as for the impossible, you will do that in Rheingold.
How far have you got in it? Am I to have the score
in May, as you promised? Come, to work!" Before
the constancy of this faith, the other cried: "Thank
you, O my beloved Christ, my yule-tude ! I regard you
as my Saviour himself, and it is with the title of Saviour
that I have placed your image over the altar of my
work."

But all those who are in need of money know very
well that tomorrow is just as pressing as today. The
sums sent by Franz brought Wagner a respite but
not peace of mind. Love? He renounced it. Art?

172 FRANZ LISZT

It was only a makeshift. Necessity obliged him to
get out of his difficulties through art, but simply In
order to go on living. "Rheingold is finished, but I
am finished too. ... It is only with a veritable de-
spair that I return to art. If I create art, if I must
renounce reality once more, if I must fall back into
the waves where the artist's fantasy flounders, if I
must content myself with a merely imaginary world,
at least people must come to the aid of my fantasy
and sustain my imagination. In this case I cannot live
like a dog, I cannot lie down in the straw and delight
in drinking cheap brandy; in some way or other I
must feel myself made much of if they wish my mind
to bring to a successful issue that work which is the
most grievous and difficult of all: the creation of a
world that does not exist." Then followed, once more,
the everlasting cry: "Listen, Franz. You must come
to my aid. My affairs are going badly, very badly. If
they want me to recover the power to endure (I mean
many things by this word), the prostitution of my art,
this sinister road on which I have set out, must lead
to something adequate or I am lost. Have you not
thought again of Berlin ?"

What he meant by "Berlin" was the production of
Tannhduser and Lohengrin at the royal Opera under
the direction of Liszt, the sole person authorized by
Wagner as able to bring this enterprise to a success-
ful issue. (Placing it in the hands of others had al-
ready cost him dear. ) But Herr von Hiilsen, the direc-
tor-general, obstinately refused without being willing
to offer any explanations. Wagner was equally obsti-
nate and would not yield. Neither would Liszt, who

FRANZ LISZT 173

knew better than anyone to what artistic and financial
disasters his friend would expose himself if he aban-
doned his dramas to the first manager who came along.
Even the Princess counselled resistance. "Let Liszt do
it. Leave Berlin entirely, completely, to him. It may
mean a long wait, but it will go well above all,
properly. . . . Write us at length, it will do good to
all our three united and indivisible hearts. The whole
atmosphere of the Altenburg shines softly when there
has been a letter from you." Wagner, however, was
gradually, slowly, tempted. This Berlin offered the
sole hope of a harvest. After Berlin, twenty other
towns would be willing to produce his pieces. Berlin
was therefore indispensable. And to justify himself
in his own eyes for his first sin against the spirit and
against the heart, he repudiated his Tannhiiuser, he
repudiated his Lohengrin, threw them to the winds,
would no longer hear them spoken of. Delivered over
to the trade of strolling singers, they were cursed by
him, condemned to beg for him, to serve merely as
bowls for catching alms.

If he still resisted a little, it was because he had dis-
covered Schopenhauer and in Schopenhauer the forti-
tude of sorrow and, deep in its heart, Liszt. "In vain,
because you are religious, you have expressed your
ideas otherwise. In spite of this, I am quite certain
that you think exactly as I do. What profundity is
yours ! In reading Schopenhauer, I was almost always
near you in thought . . . Thus I am becoming every
day more mature. Art concerns me now only as a pas-
time, a sport." Such was the excuse which he pleaded
before yielding to the proposals from Berlin and de-

174 FRANZ LISZT

livering up his repudiated children to the mercy of
chance. What did Liszt say? He had, as Wagner
well knew, a right to be deeply offended, for the veto
of the director-general was aimed more at Franz, the
declared chief of the musicians of the future, than at
himself. He thought of sending his wife to see Liszt.
But Franz replied without any appearance of bitter-
ness : "I gladly leave to your friends in Berlin whatever
satisfaction they may find in this solution, and I hope
that soon other occasions will present themselves when
my cooperation will be useful and agreeable to you."

Liszt had to take his revenge by giving in Berlin
itself a concert entirely devoted to his own works.
His friend Bulow took charge of it. It swiftly assumed
the proportions of an event in this city through which,
fifteen years before, the pianist had passed in triumph.
But if, as a young man, he had been "master" there,
this time he came back as a "servant." Accompanied
by his daughters, whom it pleased him to exhibit a
little everywhere, he was present at the rehearsals
and at several dinners given in his honor and, without
betraying on his face the suffering the thorns caused
him, he allowed himself to be crowned with roses.
For of these thorns he had many, and, although hid-
den, they were sharp enough. Another surprise
awaited him. As he was going out of the concert-
hall after a rehearsal, Bulow swept him off for a walk
"Unter den Linden." He seemed very much em-
barrassed, bashful. And suddenly: "My dear master
. . . How shall I tell you? ... I have the honor
to ask you for the hand of Mile. Cosima." Liszt
stopped short, thunderstruck. Then he opened his

FRANZ LISZT 175

arms to the man whom for a long time now he had
been pleased to call his son. The plan, however, had
to be kept secret for a while. As for Blandine, she had
refused three proposals in succession. Had she left her
heart in Paris?

As he had expected, the concert unloosed a thunder
of applause in the hall and a tempest of criticism in the
press. A double effect which artists know well. "It
appears," wrote one of the great judges in summing
up the opinion of the classical school, "it appears that
Liszt is really unable to convince himself of his in-
capacity." Franz smiled, strong in the faith of his
genius and his Christian humility. To him whose
self-esteem had experienced so many gratifications
through all Europe these increasing mortifications
seemed almost just. They were the blows of a disci-
pline that whipped his blood, nothing else. "I hope,"
he wrote to Wagner, "that the lashings I have received
from the critics will be of benefit to your Tannhauser
and that the impression which this work cannot fail
to produce on the public will not suffer too much
from the attacks of a malevolent press."

With more confidence than ever he set to work again -
composing. The Cardinal-Primate of Hungary en-
trusted him with the writing of a grand mass for the
consecration of the cathedral of Gran, and he worked
on this with fervor. The Kyrie and the Gloria were
soon finished. And this in spite of a life whose hap-
piness had begun to decline. Is this the right word?
Not so much the happiness perhaps as the enthusiasm,
the joy. He was less young in spirit. He shared
keenly Carolyne's great desire to unite her life with

176 FRANZ LISZT

his, but he was less concerned about it. He desired
it more for her sake than for his own. A sort of
indifference for everything that was not an idea began
to envelop him. Instead of suffering he watched him-
self suffer and instead of loving he let himself be loved.
This does not mean that he no longer felt. His instinct
for conquest was as keen as ever, but it was stripped
of those beautiful exigencies which, from the point
of view of the soul, give it its true value. The love-
passion, wrapped round with security, is transmuted
into love-tenderness. Henceforth this was the word
that came most frequently from Franz's pen: tender-
ness, benignity. "I live steeped in your tenderness and
entirely encompassed by it." "I thank you and bless
you." "Your blessing greeted me on the threshold
of this house which your love and your tenderness have
transformed into a heaven on earth for my heart. You.
are my music and my prayer, now and always."

The death of the Czar brought Carolyne a few
weeks of hope in regard to her divorce, but his succes-
sor showed himself just as immovable. She was
obliged to resign herself again, take more steps, plead,
wait. Happily, Liszt was composing and working
every morning, sometimes from six o'clock on. He
suffered less than the Princess from this enforced con-
cubinage. Had not Goethe taken twenty years to reg-
ularize his liaison ? In the afternoon he went out for
long walks which almost always led him to Weimar,
where calls delayed him. As a rule, he turned towards
the Karlplatz. There was a little apartment there just
beside the theatre, and two windows where a white
form seemed to wait. As soon as the great man ap-

FRANZ LISZT 177

peared, the casements closed, the curtains were drawn.
Liszt hastily ran up to the rooms of his favorite pupil.
Did she have to work so hard, that her lesson was
always prolonged so late ? It was true that this charm-
ing Agnes was destined for instruction. She was from
Hanover, but she had passed her whole life in Paris
and wore delightful toilettes that made the ladies of
Weirnar chatter. She and Liszt talked French, litera-
ture and the rest.

Was this love? Ah, why raise such questions at
once ? One can love by vocation. One can love love,
which does not necessarily imply that one loves. And
then, even when one has made a gift of oneself, some-
thing of oneself is always left over. Otherwise what
would be the use of being richer and more generous
than others? It did not even occur to Franz that any-
one could reproach him for this. Was not the fact that
he had been loved by others flattering for her whom he
loved? The poste-restante, the little clandestine larks,
the secret meetings at Diisseldorf, Gotha, Frankfort,
all this was the joy of being still young, the intimate
poetry that consists in peopling a whole country with
secret memories. In the hotel at Gotha, Agnes and
he had read together the magnificent passage from the
Evenings in Saint Petersburg on the Psalms; at Cassel,
Dante (always this Dante, who pursued him from
woman to woman).

Another excellent thing was to be able to express
himself without the least constraint. With Agnes
there was no obligatory pitch to be maintained. He
never had to tune himself to a given key. He was
completely himself. And when, after a few seasons,

178 FRANZ LISZT

she in turn had left the Grand Duchy to travel, they
had already formed the habit of speaking to each
other pen in hand. "Although I continue to write to
you, there are nevertheless many things of which I
no longer speak to you. I long to have news of you.
You know very well that I do not want to be a burden
upon you so do not write to me except when you have
the time for it but write to me always then, out of the
fullness of your heart." "Your heart is not mistaken,
I have never really left you." "Your letters are sweet
and dear to me, and you do a kind deed when you
think of me, for I am mortally sad and weary." "I
always have the same things to tell you in the same
silences. My heart is bruised and consumed incessantly
in some indescribable infinite expectation." "Pray for
me and remain kind and understanding."

In hours of discouragement, Franz found the
strength to pour himself out to this restful spirit. If
sometimes, in the midst of his work, his peace of mind
was overthrown by the injustice of the public, by
the sort of hatred with which he felt himself sur-
rounded in the musical world, or even by some sharper
pain like the brutal intellectual attack which he suffered
one day at the hands of Joachim, whom he himself
had launched into fortune, ah, then it soothed him
to turn to the mind of this Agnes, who never had a
demand or a reproach for him. "Thank you for
your tenderness, your kindness and all that grace of
simplicity and inner poetry that captivates me," he
wrote to her. "My whole life is attached to this cor-
ner of the earth (Weimar) and I hope to find here
the last and the supreme good: a death that will be

FRANZ LISZT 179

calm and resplendent with the ardors of the faith."
The Mass of Gran was worked out and finished in
a mystical transport. Franz could say that in writing
it he had prayed rather than composed. For two
months he scarcely left the blue room and the little
adjacent oratory. Yet this Mass only brought him a
new sorrow, the secret and powerful hostility of his
friend Prince Festetics who brought every effort to
bear on the Cardinal-Primate to prevent its execution.
This music-mad grandee had a mass of his own to
present! Liszt's carried the day, in spite of all, and
he himself arrived, at the end of August, 1856, at Gran,
the metropolis of Catholicism in Hungary.

There was first a solemn reception at Pest, to the
usual cries of "Elgen Liszt!" A popular festival,
for it was understood now that the composer was "an
integral part of the national pride." Then, on the
eve of the great day, Liszt was present at a low mass
and prayed for the absent mistress and the dear Mag-
nolette. At last, on August 31, four thousand listeners
were gathered in the basilica, among them the Em-
peror and the Archduke. Liszt lifted his baton to
direct the first of his great religious works.

"A revolution," people whispered. "A great stroke
for the Church," said Biilow. A new field for art,
thought Liszt, a limitless field and one for which he
felt an irresistible vocation growing within him. "The
composer of Church music is also a preacher and a
priest," he said. "Where speech fails music comes and
brings one a new faith, a new transport." Palestrina,
Lassus, Bach and Beethoven, such were the masters he
aspired to succeed. He had already made his first

180 FRANZ LISZT

attempt in this sacred music in the Thirteenth Psalm
for solos, choir and orchestra, composed during this
same period "with tears of blood."

"How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord? for ever? how

long wilt thou hide thy face from me?
How long shall I take counsel in my soul, having sorrow

in my heart daily? How long shall mine enemy be

exalted over me?
Consider and hear me, O Lord my God : lighten mine eyes,

lest I sleep the sleep of death ;
Lest mine enemy say, I have prevailed against him; and

those that trouble me rejoice when I am moved.
But I have trusted in thy mercy; my heart shall rejoice in

thy salvation.

I will sing unto the Lord, because he hath dealt bounti-
fully with me."

Words in which were summed up the affliction of his
only and infinitely dear mistress, the sorrows of Liszt
and that firm hope which never left his trustful soul.
The same season, the same emotions gave birth to the
fugue on the name of B-A-C-H and the Mass of Gran.
A solemn mass of which the six grand divisions, ad-
mirable in structure, of a striking unity in conception,
are formed by the development of characteristic themes
that run through the work and coordinate the parts
according to a musical system utilized by Liszt in his
symphonic poems. This wholly new, mystical, dra-
matic form was a reproach to Liszt in the eyes of
those who thought that human suffering had nothing
to learn from the mystery of the divine sacrifice. But
into what could the musician put his heart if not into

FRANZ LISZT 181

this? A strange sort of criticism! Is not this what
the music sings in its depths under the eye of God,
to the repentant sinner? Franz could not hold himself
strictly to plain-chant and liturgical development with-
out condemning himself to writing nothing but occa-
sional pieces. But itwas a prayer that he hadcomposed.
Beethoven has done the same thing in his Mass in D
and Wagner in his Parsifal. Liszt, however, commits
an error, that of shutting his work up under the vaults
of a cathedral where the freedom of his exposition
produces the effect of disorder. All the force and
passion are lost in the vast resonance of the basilica.
Plain-chant, on the other hand, with its powerful uni-
son, its simple or massive harmonies of the faux bour-
don, balances itself and adapts itself to the architec-
tural arrangements. There indeed is that "pitched and
religious harmony" of which Montaigne speaks and
which blends so well with "the sombre vastness of our
churches, the diversity of the ornaments and the order
of the ceremonies, and with the devout sound of our
organs."

The Mass of Gran provoked violent criticism be-
cause of all the harmonic audacities, the new dissonant
forms (notably in the Crucifixus) which it contained
forms in which Liszt was already employing clashes
of seconds, like our most recent composers. The Em-
peror cared little for it, but the Cardinal-Primate de-
lighted in it. This prelate invited the author to dine
at his palace in company with some sixty high digni-
taries and offered him a toast in Latin.

Liszt then made a visit to the Franciscan monastery
at Pest, where he was well liked. They made him

182 FRANZ LISZT

heartily welcome. They received him into the third
order, founded by Saint Francis on the day when he
preached to the birds. Blessed day when Brother
Masseo came and delivered the Lord's message to
the Poor Man of Assisi : "It is not for yourself alone
that you have been called, but that you may gather
an abundant harvest of souls and that God may win
a great many by your mediation." So was born that
third order, for the salvation of all men, in all con-
ditions of life. To enter it was for Franz the accom-
plishment of an old and dear desire. More than
ever one sees him anxious to cultivate his soul. Hence-
forth it was a question of tracing his way back to the
foundations, as Lacordaire called it, "penetrating to
those living sources that spring up into eternal life."

XX

"EXCELLENT Franz . . . Your symphonic poems
have become completely familiar to me: they are the
only music I am interested in. Every day I read from
end to end one or another of your scores as I would
read a poem, calmly, without stopping. It is like plung-
ing every time into a deep, limpid sea where I become
entirely myself, forget the whole world and live for
an hour my own true life. Refreshed and fortified, I
then reascend to the surface and sigh for your presence.
Yes, yes, you knew what you were about there, you
knew what you were about there 1 You must come
soon and bring me my Dante. Beautiful, marvellous
prospect. Bring the Princess, do. you hear? And the
child must come too. Always and eternally, your Rich-
ard Wagner."

But Liszt was travelling with his Mass, from Gran
to Budapest, from Prague to Stuttgart. In this city
he lingered awhile, for he was staying with one of the
loveliest women of the international great world, the
White Fairy of Theophile Gautier, the swan of Hein-
rich Heine, the beautiful Marie Kalergis, in fact,
Chopin's favorite pupil. For more than ten years,
Liszt had been a very dear friend of this great lady
virtuoso. They were both solitaries, migratory birds,
and they were the two earliest followers of Wagner.
Nomads whose sole fatherland was art and a few
amorous memories scattered across musical Europe.

183

184 FRANZ LISZT

Marie Kalergis, born the Countess Nesselrode, was
half Polish, half Russian, like Carolyne, who had
double and perhaps triple reasons for being jealous of
her. Had not this "swan-woman" had the joy of
nursing Liszt once when he had fallen ill at Bonn?
Was it not whispered that she belonged to the secret
diplomatic corps of the Czar ? And especially that she
was dazzlingly beautiful ? However it may have been,
she pretended to be weary of the dissonances of the
"European concert" in which she had held one of the
leading parts, she spoke of building herself a hermitage
in Baden and played duets with Liszt, his Preludes and
his Orpheus. At thirty-four it was said of her, as it
had been said at twenty:

"De quel mica de neige vierge,
De quelle moelle de roseau,
De quelle hostie at de quel cierge
A-t-on fait le blanc de sa peau?

A-t-on pris la goutte lactee
Tachant Tazur du del d'hiver,
Le lis a la, pulpe argentee
La blanche ecume de la mer;

. . . L'ivoire ou ses mains ont des ailes,
Et, comme des papillons blancs,
Sur la pointe des notes freles,
Suspendent leurs baisers tremblants . . ."

With some difficulty Liszt tore himself away from
this goddess of the "major mode of white" in whom
music had placed a beautiful red heart, and at last

FRANZ LISZT 185

he reached Zurich carrying under his arm the score
his friend had demanded. They had scarcely embraced
each other when Wagner sat down at his piano. The
finale of the Faust-Symphony, which he already knew,
had convinced him of his friend's "magistral power of
conception." The recollection of Margaret floated
there, pure and light, without forcing the attention by
any violent means. The Dante-Symphony, in turn,
filled him with astonishment. What a mine of hidden
treasures was this man, swarming with happy finds
and with crudities, suddenly interrupted by utterly
commonplace spots of which his genius was quite un-
aware. It set Wagner's mind humming with ideas.
Then behold, suddenly, an emphatic motif succeeding
the sweet and soaring Magnificat.

"No, no, not that!" he exclaimed. "Take that out.
None of the majestic Lord God ! Preserve that vague,
delicate wavering."

"You are right," Liszt replied. "That was my idea
too. The Princess felt differently about it. But it
shall be done as you advise."

This Princess. Wagner had already begun to dis-
trust her, nestling as she was there in that "heart of
art," where he proposed to dwell alone with his friend.
But how could he keep any bitterness against the
strange creature when she arrived a few days later?
Her Polish and patrician grace, her whimsical ways,
captivated even the difficult Minna Wagner. The
Hotel Baur-au-Lac, where she took rooms, at once
became the centre of an animation that spread through
the whole town. There were nothing but comings and
goings of carriages and servants, dinners, evening

186 FRANZ LISZT

parties, and one saw appearing from all sides any
number of personages whom no one had ever suspected
of living in Zurich: Winterberger, a pupil of Liszt,
Kirchner, a passionate admirer of Schumann, who
played eccentrically, Kochly and ten other professors
from the university, the architect Semper, the shy
Sulzer (a manufacturer of Winterthur), the Wesen-
doncks, Heim, the cantatrice, Doctor Wille, and our
old friend Herwegh. An agreeable atmosphere of
liberty and unconstraint prevailed about the Princess.
In the intimate gatherings at Frau Wagner's, she
helped the latter to serve the guests.

October 22, always a solemn date, was particularly
brilliant this time, and the Princess collected at the
hotel all the persons of mark that Zurich could offer.
A telegram from Weimar brought a long poem which
Herwegh recited at the beginning of the evening.
Then Liszt sat down at the piano, Mme. Heim on
his right, Wagner on his left, and they sang the whole
first act of a work which no one yet knew: Die
Walkure. The enthusiasm was so great that, in spite
of their fatigue, they also sang a scene from the second
act. Following this, Richard and Franz played with
two pianos a symphonic work of Liszt. Supper, to
bring it to an end, champagne, "petit cognac," speeches
and discussions. Goethe's Egmont was mentioned.
Wagner admired it, Liszt disliked it because the hero
allowed himself to be deceived. The music had thrown
their nerves into such a state that in the midst of an
agonized silence the two composers insulted each other,
face glaring at face, distorted with passion. A superb
moment which no one wished to spoil by a word. Then

FRANZ LISZT 187

the violence suddenly died down in a mutual stupor.
But the two friends retained for the rest of their
lives the obscure feeling that if once a dispute broke
out between them it would be as terrible as love.

On another day, at Herwegh's, Liszt became enam-
oured of a piano that was horribly out of tune. The
poet wished to make a precipitate search for a good
one, but what a mistake this would have been ! Liszt
adored discordant pianos. He improvised best on
them. The dissonances stood out with an exquisite
brilliance, and the modulations connected themselves
in the most unexpected way. "It was so beautiful,"
said Wagner, "that we ceased to think of it as magic
it was sorcery." While Liszt accompanied Wagner
back to his house, the latter confided to him the sorrows
of his conjugal life. And Liszt, after these painful con-
fessions of his dearest friend, stopped, seized him in
his arms, and, without saying a word, pressed his
lips upon Wagner's. The memory of this moment
never left them.

Before long, the whole little circle set out on the
road for Saint-Gall, where they were going to spend
eight days inaugurating the concerts of the new con-
ductor. The Princess invited everybody to the Hotel
du Brochet. Wagner and his wife had a room beside
that of Mme. Carolyne. But on the first night, the
latter was seized with one of her stifling fits of hysteria,
and, to drive away the hallucinations that tormented
her, Magnolette began reading aloud to her. Wagner
woke up and irritably rapped on the wall. The read-
ing went on. He tried to restrain his anger. But at
two o'clock in the morning, unable to contain him-

188 FRANZ LISZT

self any longer, he fell into a state of indescribable ex
citement, struck the wall without stopping, roused the
servants and paced the corridor in his night-shirt. He
arranged to have a room at the other end of the hotel
and went and complained to Liszt, who was sleeping
heavily. The following day, neither the Princess
Marie nor Franz, who were long accustomed to these
extravagances, seemed in the least embarrassed.

With the little Saint-Gall orchestra, Liszt repeated
his Preludes and his Orpheus, the execution of which
was truly captivating. Wagner placed Orpheus, so re-
strained in form, first among the works of Liszt. As
for the public, it was particularly excited by the Pre-
ludes. Wagner conducted Beethoven's Erolca "with
much pain," for on such occasions he always had chills
and fever. But the two men were anxious to judge
each other at the conductor's desk. They observed
each other "with an attention and interest that were
truly instructive." On both sides, the impression was
just and profound.

There was a banquet in the evening. There was an-
other banquet the following day. At the house of
a local Maecenas, Liszt played Beethoven's Grand
Sonata in B-flat-Major. Kirchner declared:

"We have the right to say that we have just
been present at something that did not seem possible,
and I still believe in the impossibility of that which,
nevertheless, we have heard."

"The originality of Liszt," Wagner added, "con-
sists in his giving, himself, at the piano what others con-
struct with pen and paper."

At last, on the eve of their departure, to commem-

FRANZ LISZT 189

orate the twentieth anniversary of the marriage of
Wagner with Minna, these marvellous children paced
by couples from one end to the other of the Hotel
du Brochet in a vast Polonaise, while Liszt made the
piano ring with the "Wedding March" from Lohen-
grin.

Behold Wagner, alone again, toiling at his Siegfried
and reading the correspondence of Schiller and Goethe.
"This book," he wrote to Magnolette, "has become a
sort of consecration of our friendship. I rarely read
what is actually before my eyes, but rather what I put
into it myself. So here I have been reading of all I
should be able to create, evoke and develop with Liszt
if we were together. Our exceptional relations of
friendship I have read of them in letters of gold.
. . ." And to Liszt himself: "Your friendship is the
great event of my life."

Liszt, on his side, continued to act on behalf of him
whose glory seemed to him to be the honor of a peo-
ple. He wrote to the young Grand Duke: "It is my
duty, Sire, to call your attention anew to something
most important, and I approach the matter without any
preamble. For the honor and in the interest of the
protection which Your Royal Highness accords to
the fine arts, as well as for the honor of taking the
initiative and assuming precedence in these matters,
which I dare beg you to claim for Weimar, as far as
possible, it seems to me not only suitable but necessary
and almost indispensable that the Nibelugenring of
Wagner should have its first performance at Weimar.
No doubt this performance is far from simple and

190 FRANZ LISZT

easy; it would be necessary to take exceptional meas-
ures, as, for instance, the construction of a theatre
and the engagement of a personnel ad hoc that would
conform to Wagner's intentions: difficulties and ob-
stacles might be encountered, but it is my opinion, after
weighing everything thoroughly, that if Your Royal
Highness were sufficiently interested to desire it seri-
ously these matters would settle themselves. As for
the material and moral result, I do not hesitate to hold
myself responsible for its being in all respects such that
Your Highness would have reason to be satisfied with
it. The work of Wagner, which is half finished and will
be completely achieved in two years, will dominate this
epoch as the most monumental effort of contemporary
art ; it is unprecedented, marvellous and sublime. How
much to be deplored then are the evil conditions of
mediocrity that reign and govern and succeed in pre-
venting it from shining and radiating over the world I"
But Karl Alexander had something very different
on his mind: a triple monument to his grandfather,
to Goethe and to Schiller which was to be dedicated
with a festival in the approaching month of September.
The musical programme was placed in Liszt's hands.
In the interim he had to bear several new decisive de-
feats at Leipzig and Vienna where they hissed his
compositions, which he had gone to conduct. At Aix-
la-Chapelle, his friend Hiller, an old comrade of twenty
years' standing, himself gave the signal for an anti-
Lisztian manifestation. But he who could so easily
have taken a spectacular revenge would not consent to
demean himself. The pianist in him was completely
dead. He could not comprehend why so few artists

FRANZ LISZT 191

realized that he was eager to strive for a higher aim.
It astonished him. "Am I not nobly good-natured
enough," he thought, "for the whole artistic world?"
Ah, that was precisely what they would not forgive you
for!

Happily, Wagner knew it, said it, proclaimed it in
the newspapers, which meant more than anything else
to this soul in which love demanded love. He had to
give himself in order to possess- Looking back on the
evenings at Saint-Gall, Franz confessed to Richard:
"Your radiant glance filled my soul with rich light,
reconciled it with itself and enveloped it in caresses."
Ophelia is still loved, certainly, "but Hamlet, like
every exceptional character, imperiously demands of
her the wine of love, and is not contented with a little
milk. He wishes to be understood, but without sub-
mitting to the necessity of explaining himself." Not
a little milk, but wine: that is the demand of this
Lohengrin who is always ready to reembark in the
swan-drawn boat. No explanation, but comprehension.
What he lacked at the Altenburg in the way of new
desires, silences, even sufferings, he could only find
henceforth in the land of the ideal.

This year 1857 was a Y ear * l ve * or ^e whole
Liszt family. Cosima was married to Hans von Biilow
on August 1 8, in Berlin. And Blandine, who had left
for a visit with her mother in Paris, became engaged
there to the lawyer Emile Ollivier, whom she married
in Florence on the sacred day, October 22. Franz
was present at the marriage of the younger and left to
Nelida the joy of marrying off the elder. A fpr

192 FRANZ LISZT

himself, his work of love for this year was the Faust-
Symphony and Die Ideale.

They were given for the first time during the fes-
tivities of the centenary of Karl August, the prince-
protector of the arts. During these three days at the
beginning of September, Weimar was packed with
poets, musicians and the curious. All the windows were
rented that overlooked the passing procession. As
Liszt and the Princess appeared at theirs, in the house
of some friends, the fine ladies quickly drew back in
order not to be obliged to bow to the illegal couple.
From that moment, Franz and Carolyne discontinued
all relations with the society of Weimar. At the
grand concert on September 5, Die Ideale was coldly
received. But the public could not resist the Faust-
Symphony. It was Liszt's masterpiece, his Ninth Sym-
phony, that perfect fruit which the best of plants pro-
duces only once. Morever, it came at the right mo-
ment and constituted a dramatic prologue of immense
significance for the new forms of instrumental music.
At the same time that it closed the album of pro-
gramme-music, the Faust-Symphony opened the book
of the great musical syntheses. Its three parts, Faust,
Margaret, Mephistopheles, while they sketched three
absolutely different characters, preserved, thanks to
their thematic unity, all the grandeur of a single drama.
"I am he who searches,'* says the man. "I am she
who loves," says the woman. "And I," says the devil,
"I am he who denies." As the arbiter of this conflict,
Liszt brings it to a conclusion as lover and mystic with
a chorus that proclaims the virtue of the "eternal fem-
inine." "That eternal feminine leads us onward and

FRANZ LISZT 193

upward." Such was the determined Credo of this
faithful believer. "In giving this to the crowd today,"
Wagner wrote to him, "reflect that you are doing
exactly what we do when we wear out our bodies, our
looks and our lives before the eyes of the world. We
do not expect them to come back to us, loved and
understood by all."

Liszt had given everything now, from the depths
of his rare heart. He no longer expected much of
anything in return. He had reached the point where
to receive no longer gave him happiness.

For a long time now, Karl Alexander had dreamed
of nothing but the laurels of his grandfather. He
proposed to make the Weimar theatre once more what
it had been in the time of Goethe, without perceiving
for a moment that for the past ten years this theatre
had become the most important musical centre in
Europe. He never suspected that the conductor of
his orchestra was coveted by all the courts of Germany.
He wanted plays, not all this music of the future which
made the journalists laugh. And it was to "that good,
that excellent friend Liszt" that he appealed to find
the director-general capable of restoring to the Wei-
marian scene its former lustre. Liszt chose Herr von
Dingelstedt, who soon arrived and set himself to the
task. In a few months he produced a series of bad
plays, pleasing in their mediocrity and admirably re-
munerative. This meant that the place left for music
was reduced to a minimum. This Dingelstedt was a
clever, insinuating man, supercilious and fine-spoken.
As long as the court remained faithful to Liszt, he too

194 FRANZ LISZT

showed himself friendly, even assiduous in his atten-
tions. But when the Dowager Grand Duchess died and
Karl Alexander aspired to play the role of his ancestor,
in more princely fashion, the director-general threw
off his mask. With one stroke of his pen he crossed
off from his budget the new credits demanded for
music. Liszt saw it all coming and realized that he
would have to renounce positively the laughable project
of offering the Nibelungenring to the people of Wei-
mar. He caused Lassen to be appointed assistant
conductor and barricaded himself in a stricter solitude
at the Altenburg.

For a long time he did not leave it except to travel.
Now it was a Mozart festival which he went to Vienna
to direct, now his Mass, which he took up again at
Pest, or a visit to a new friend of the Zukunfts-Musik,
Prince von Hohenzollern-Hechingen, who invited him
to his castle of Lowenberg in Silesia. For the rest,
he lived in the circle of his pupils, of whom Tausig,
Bronsart, Klindworth, Rubinstein and Cornelius were
the most notable. The Princess applied herself to
writing, just like Mme. d'Agoult. But more and
more her mind was becoming occupied with religious
problems alone. Deep in the smoke of her black cigars,
she was sketching out a work entitled Buddhism and
Christianity, while Franz noted down the first two
draughts of his Saint Elizabeth. But, in spite of this
double activity, there was something not indeed be-
tween them, but in the surrounding atmosphere, in the
spiritual air of Weimar that portended a new change
in their destinies. It is not always with his reason or
his intelligence that man hears the note of warning:

FRANZ LISZT 195

sometimes his very senses, his superstitions warn him
better and arouse him in time. "I am still a part of
this world," thought Liszt, "without quite knowing
why. My mind and my heart dwell in regions that are
little known to others, and if anyone asked me what
was wrong I should be very much embarrassed to re-
ply." No doubt. This time the enemy was not in
himself but in the office of the director-general. There
was being concocted what is always concocted against
men of the first quality: hatred. It was only looking
for a pretext to burst out, and Liszt provided this by
producing the Barber of Bagdad, by his friend Cor-
nelius.

He considered that this opera had a great deal of
spirit and originality, style and nobility, and he had
it put in rehearsal with delight. Herr von Dingelstedt,
who thought it was bad, made the most of his oppor-
tunity, and on the evening of the performance, when
the curtain fell, Liszt was greeted for the first time
in Weimar with a volley of hisses. No one was de-
ceived: it was a carefully prepared cabal. It lasted
quite a while, in spite of the feigned or real indignation
of the Grand Duke, until finally Liszt, walking back
again to the conductor's desk, turned with the
whole orchestra to face the audience and applauded the
author.

This same evening it was December 18,1858 he
decided to hand in his resignation. It was like a
thunder-clap in the town. Two days later, he directed
once more the First Symphony of Beethoven (in C-
Major ) , and this in so stirring a manner that the public
could not contain its enthusiasm. In these moments,

196 FRANZ LISZT

remarked Andersen, Liszt became as beautiful as in*
spiration itself; and Cornelius notes that during the
performance he seemed so filled with his demon that
people hardly dared to look at him. The Grand Duke
united his efforts with those of such of the public as
had remained faithful to him and tried to make Liszt
retract his decision.

"Is there anything," he asked, "that could persuade
you to stay?"

"Yes," he replied, "the authorization to produce
Tristan."

Of this there could be no question, Wagner being
precisely the electric pole from which all these storms
proceeded. And, in fact, the Herr Kapellmeister never
officially resumed his baton at Weimar. He addressed
to the Grand Duke a letter of justification in which
he explained the reasons that obliged him to renounce
for good a post which he believed he had filled with
honor unless a very different conception of his position
assured him a more genuine independence. He did
not conceal the fact that his own personal work de-
manded on his part an effort that he could scarcely find
the energy for in the conditions of petty conflict to
which he saw himself reduced. "What remains to me
to write will, I hope, have echoes more prolonged
than I should be able to hope for in my personal
cooperation in the bustle of the theatre and concerts.
In continuing my present duties, Sire, I should be giving
you what no amount of money would be able to make
up for, my time, which is my renown. Gratitude can
command me to make all sacrifices, provided they are
not sterile."

FRANZ LISZT 197

The Grand Duke, in spite of his respect for Liszt,
did not yield him the victory. And the musician real-
ized that once more the hour had come when, in order
not to renounce himself, he must bid farewell to the
personage he had been. Officially, during the whole of
another year, nothing seemed to have changed. But
in vain they made him an honorary citizen of Weimar
and arranged a torchlight procession on his birthday :
his soul detached itself from the places where it had
suffered. He had ceased to believe and he was tired
of waiting. He had resolved on a separation.

It was a matter of intellectual decency still more
than one of sentiment. In remaining, the spirit would
have abdicated, and this was something to which Liszt
could not consent. Before him, the theatre of Weimar
had had no significance except under Goethe, and
Goethe had never needed to appear there in public.
Liszt asked for nothing more than the spiritual direc-
tion, but this seemed to him fundamental. Karl
Alexander was unwilling to give it to him.

One evening, when he was unusually weary, Liszt
jotted down on paper, for Agnes, this confidence:

"If I have remained at Weimar for a dozen years,
I have been sustained by a sentiment that is not lack-
ing in nobility to safeguard the honor, the dignity,
the great character of a woman against infamous per-
secutions and more, a grand idea : that of giving new
life to music by a more intimate alliance with poetry.
The idea of such a development that would be freer
and, so to speak, more adequate to the spirit of the
times has always kept me on the alert. This idea, in
spite of the opposition it has encountered and the

198 FRANZ LISZT

obstacles to which it has given rise on all sides, has, it is
true, made some progress. Whatever people may do,
it will triumph invincibly, for it is an integral part of
the sum of just and true ideas of our epoch, and it is
a consolation to me to have served it loyally, conscien-
tiously and disinterestedly. If, when I settled here in
..i 848, 1 had wished to attach myself to the posthumous
party in music, associate myself with its hypocrisy, flat-
ter its prejudices, etc. . . . nothing could have been
easier, thanks to my previous connections with the
principal bigwigs on that side. I would certainly have
profited externally in consideration and advantages;
the very journals that have taken it upon themselves to
heap abuse and insults upon me would have vied with
one another in praising and extolling me, without my
taking any great pains to make them do so. They
would gladly have acquitted me of the few peccadillos
of my youth and celebrated and cried up in every way
the zealot of the good and healthy traditions, from
Palestrina to Mendelssohn. But such was not to be my
lot; my conviction was too sincere, my faith in the
present and future of art at once too ardent and too
positive for me to be able to accommodate myself to
the vain formulas of objurgation of our pseudo-classi-
cists who are moving heaven and earth crying that art
is lost, art is lost.

"The waves of the spirit are not like those of the
sea. Not to them has it been said: Tou can go just
so far and no farther/ On the contrary, the spirit
blows where it listeth and the art of this epoch has
its word to say just as much as that of the preceding
epochs, and it will infallibly utter this.

FRANZ LISZT 199

"Nevertheless, I have never concealed from myself
that my position was most difficult and my task very
ungrateful, for long years at least. Wagner having
so valiantly innovated and achieved such admirable
masterpieces, my first care was to win for these master-
pieces an established place rooted in the German soil,
when he was exiled from his fatherland and all the big
and little theatres of Germany were afraid of taking
the risk of his name on a placard. Four or five years
of obstinacy, if you will, on my part, have sufficed
to accomplish this, despite the slenderness of the means
that have been at my disposal here. . . . The result
is that Vienna, Berlin, Munich, etc., for the last five
years have done nothing but follow what little Weimar
(which they ridiculed at first) dictated to them ten
years ago. They would like to call a halt now, make
some sort of impossible digression that would be like
the piece of new cloth in the old garment or the new
wine in the old bottle. . . . But the fact is that some-
thing very different must be done, and I intend to jus-
tify the inscription which Wagner wrote for me under
his portrait: 'Du weisst wie das werden wird? And
there shall be no relaxation on my part as long as I
live."

XXI

NEVERTHELESS, the cup was not yet completely full.
The last drops of bitterness were lacking. But when
unhappiness begins to flow, it does not stop at the
middle of the glass, and the best reckoned measure is
always that of sorrow.

The year 1859 opened with the first storm that had
ever occurred between Wagner and Liszt. From
Venice, where Wagner had taken refuge to compose
Tristan, he tried to persuade Liszt to give Rienzi at
Weimar, for he was in need of money. Franz spoke
of this to the director, in spite of their disagreement,
met with a refusal and did not insist. There followed
a correspondence with Richard, bitter-sweet on one
side and pathetic on the other, because, for Liszt, not
to "serve" his friend was almost to betray him. But
for Richard it was a question of keeping alive, of
eating in order to be able to work. He had pawned
everything he possessed when Franz informed him that
just then he could do nothing for him. This drew from
Wagner one of those arrows that he knew so well
how to shoot at the "good fortune" of Liszt and his
indifference, at the very moment when the latter, over-
flowing with admiration for the first act of Tristan,
was sending him in reply his Dante and his Mass. The
blow hurt him so keenly that Liszt in his turn re-
sponded with the sort of words that cannot be for-
gotten. "As the Symphony and the Mass cannot take
the place of good bank securities, it seems useless for

200

FRANZ LISZT 201

me to send them to you. Not less superfluous hence-
forth will be your own pressing dispatches and wound-
ing letters."

Poor dear great men who, for want of an available
thousand francs, spoil so rare an affection ! For if the
storm, after bursting, had left the sky serene again,
nevertheless something was changed in the limpidity
of their souls. A disturbance of confidence, however
passing, deprives the power of love of that blind se-
curity whose very sightlessness is its most beautiful
condition. Wagner attributed to wounded pride what
was nothing but frustrated love. Liszt suffered in
silence until one day Richard wrote to him : "Your pain
has made me see the ugliness of what I did." They
mutually forgave each other, but they were never able
to forget completely. And the one who forgot the least
was Liszt. His transparent, highly impressionable
nature came out blighted from this experience. The
ingratitude of Weimar and the violence of his friend
had taken from his wings their impalpable lustre.
"You are too great, too noble, too beautiful for our
Germany, with its provincial ideas," Wagner declared
to him; "you have, among other men, the appearance
of a god whose radiance they are not habituated and
disposed to sustain. This is quite natural. You are
nevertheless the first revelation of this species, for
never before you has Germany witnessed the appear-
ance of such a focus of light and warmth. How far
has the dull and sorry attitude of those who surround
you wounded your heart, filled you with anger and
bitterness? That is what I should like to know, I
who have become so insensitive to wounds of this sort

202 FRANZ LISZT

that I often have trouble discovering, where I have
been hurt.'*

But Wagner himself confessed to Biilow that from
this time on he did not know where to find the proper
style in which to address Liszt. There was between
tHem that wall of glass through which everything
remains visible but which prevents one human being
from touching another. When, in two hearts, phrases
have taken the place of words, a more essential bond
is on the point of slackening: the affectionate meaning
of silence.

Moreover, Carolyne no longer encouraged a devo-
tion of which she had become more and more jealous.
Wagner had little love for her, she knew, he who could
not endure blue-stockings and pedants. She, on her
side, dreaded his dangerous glory on Franz's account.
It was almost a duty, from her point of view, to re-
move Liszt from the excessive influence of the man
against all of whose ideas she had begun to fight. So
she placed him on guard against everything that came
from Venice, then from Paris, where, at the entreaty
of Liszt, Wagner established himself again. She even
went so far as to insinuate that he was trying to
separate them. But Franz would not admit any such
absurdity, and when the Princess made a journey to
Paris he urged her to go and see Wagner : "Treat him
kindly, for he is ill and incurable. For that reason
one must simply love him and try to serve him so far
as that is possible." But she did not go, and between
the two friends the breach grew wider. "The shadows
in his nature," Wagner confided to Mathilde Wesen-
donck, speaking of Liszt, "are not in his character, but

FRANZ LISZT 203

only in his instinct. . . . The poor man now makes
his whole sacrifice in silence. He submits to every-
thing and believes that he has no power to do other-
wise. You may imagine how touching is the greeting
we exchange now and then clandestinely, like two lovers
separated by the world."

On October 15, the life of Liszt was made emptier
by a new departure: his Magnolette, the "good angel
of the Altenburg," married Prince Constantin Hohen-
lohe and left to settle in Vienna. She had found it
difficult to make up her mind to this marriage, which
put an end to her beautiful life with her mother and
Liszt, whom she loved deeply. It was he himself who,
with a torn heart, made her decide upon It, considering
it his duty to insist upon her resuming in the world the
place of which his liaison with her mother had de-
prived her. So the great house, so full of movement
during these dozen years, was slowly becoming de-
populated. But if the wedding festivities sustained
Carolyne's hopes and quickened her steps, Franz, on
the other hand, was saddened. He seemed to have
lost a little of that admirable confidence which had
always supported him, not confidence in himself but
in his happiness. He passed his forty-eighth birthday
all alone at the Altenburg, and it was perhaps the
first time when, on this great day, usually so brilliantly
celebrated, the emptiness of his heart corresponded
with the emptiness of the rooms. But Carolyne wrote
to him, and Wagner too, and Magne ; Cosima had even
kept for him the surprise of a visit. But once more
He was filled with that weariness of the soul which no
longer feels itself catted.

204 FRANZ LISZT

Of all the letters he received, that from Wagner
was certainly the most beautiful. Why then did it
no longer give him the same joy as of old? "In cast-
ing a serious glance over our relations past and pres-
ent,' 5 said Richard, "I am struck with the solemnity
of this day, which certainly should be regarded as one
of the happiest that nature can count. In fact, this
day has given the world an inestimable treasure.
Without the precious gift it has made to humanity in
calling you into existence, there would have been an
immense gap in the work of creation. The extent of
such a gap could be calculated only by one who loves
you as I love you and who could imagine you suddenly
erased from the ranks of the living. I have considered
this frightful gap, as much as the imagination is able
to conceive it; then, as if I were emerging from a
terrible dream, I have carried my glance back to you
and have felt happy, profoundly happy, to verify your
real existence and salute your appearance as that of
one who has been newly born. Such are the feelings
inspired by your anniversary, which has such a high
significance for me."

In this appeal, however, Franz did not hear the
sounds he had once heard. In vain he read and re-read
the letter: it did not have the old ring of sincerity.
Then he sat down at the piano and played a few notes :

o

.,

fr

FRANZ LISZT 205

"This harmony," Wagner had said seven years be-
fore, "brings us closer together than all the sentences
in the world." After repeating it many times in the
echoing salon, Liszt, for the first time in a long while,
wept.

Other tears were to follow.

Daniel, who was studying law at Vienna, had come
to spend his Christmas holidays with his sister Cosima
in Berlin. He had been seriously 511 with consumption
for a long time, and his condition suddenly grew worse
and soon became so alarming that Liszt was summoned
in great haste.

Already this youth of twenty was nothing but a
shadow among the living, and four days after his fa-
ther's arrival he had almost ceased to breathe. He
was unconscious most of the time, occasionally uttering
a few words. "I am going to get your places ready
for you," he said. Hans von Biilow, Cosima and Liszt
took turns at the bedside, and the father passed many
hours there on his knees. During the fourth night it
was he who discovered that his son's heart had ceased
to beat. Then a great sob rose from him, the tears
streamed over his face, and his whole being strained
up in a passionate prayer to God : "Let us die to our-
selves in order to live henceforth in the Lord. Let us
cast off our mad passions, our vain attachments, all the
dust of our futilities, and long only for heaven."

Cosima herself laid out the body, dressed it and
placed a portrait of Pascal at the feet. They had con-
stantly spoken of Pascal together those last days. And
the image remained in the coffin. The funeral was
carried out with great simplicity. Four persons made

206 FRANZ LISZT

up the procession : the chaplain, Liszt, his daughter and
his son-in-law. It was under a splendid Christmastide
sun, and, while the acolytes in their white surplices
swung the censer, a flock of doves wheeled at a great
height over the grave.

Liszt took note of all these things in order to tell
them to Carolyne. And when he returned to Weimar,
it seemed to him that the man he had been was more
and more losing himself in space.

Another unforeseen event suddenly astounded the
Altenburg. One fine day in March, 1 860, they learned
that the Princess's divorce had been pronounced and
that every obstacle to their marriage had now been
removed. Carolyne's joy did not last long, for the
Bishop of Fulda, whom they consulted at once, refused
to recognize the validity of the decree. Only one
means of asserting her rights remained to the Princess,
the intervention of Rome. She decided to start at
once, thinking it would be a matter of a few weeks.
And on May 17 she set out from Weimar, leaving her
beloved Franz alone in the old house where they had
passed twelve years of intimacy. The soul of the Prin-
cess was full of fortitude, but Liszt could not recover
his peace of mind. His composition, The Dead, is of
this date. Without any joy, he again took up his Saint
Elizabeth, and his evenings dragged by without any de-
sire to show himself at the court or to join his friends
at the cafe. The weeks were followed by months, for,
in spite of the support of the Grand Duke, the Princess
was encountering at Rome the same difficulties as in
Russia.

And Franz, who was now approaching his fiftieth

FRANZ LISZT 207

year, passed through a crisis of neurasthenia. Every-
thing bored him. He took pleasure in nothing but a
project for establishing the canon of church singing on
the sole basis of the Gregorian chant. "In certain less
frequented regions of art, there is a kind of Jacob's
struggle between the thought and the style, the senti-
ment and the pen. . . . Work is imposed upon us -at
once as a condemnation and a deliverance." And then,
once more to Agnes, what lay at the bottom of his
mind: "I am mortally down-hearted, and can neither
say anything nor hear anything. Prayer alone helps
me at moments, but, alas, imperatively as I need it, I
cannot pray any more with much continuity. May
God give me the grace to pass through this mortal
crisis, and may the light of his pity shine through my
shadows."

About this time he took a fresh ream of paper and
wrote :

"This is my testament

"I am writing on the date of September 14 (1860),
when the Church celebrates the elevation of the Holy
Cross. The name of this feast also expresses the
ardent and mysterious emotion which, like a sacred
stigmata, has transpierced my entire life.

"Yes, Jesus Christ crucified, the madness and the
elevation of the Cross, this was niy true vocation. I
have felt it to the depths of my heart from the age of
seventeen, when with tears and supplications I begged
to be permitted to enter the seminary in Paris, and I
hoped that it would be given to me to live the life of
the saints and perhaps die the death of the martyrs.

208 FRANZ LISZT

It has not been so, alas ! But never since, through the
many sins and errors that I have committed and for
which I am sincerely repentant and contrite, has the
divine light of the Cross been wholly withdrawn from
me. Sometimes it has even flooded my whole soul
with its glory. I thank God for it, and I shall die
with my soul attached to the Cross, our redemption,
our supreme beatitude; and to render a testimony to
my faith, I desire to receive the sacraments of the
Catholic, Apostolic and Roman Church before my
death, and thus obtain the remission and absolution of
my sins, amen.

"Whatever good I have done and thought for twelve
years, I owe to Her whom I have so ardently desired
to call by the sweet name of wife which human ma-
lignity and the most deplorable machinations have
obstinately opposed hitherto to Jeanne-Elizabeth-
Carolyne, Princess Wittgenstein, born Iwanowska.

"I cannot write her name without an ineffable thrill.
All my joys have come from her, and my sufferings will
always go to her to find their appeasement. She has
not only associated and identified herself completely
and without respite with my existence, my work, my
cares, my career aiding me with her advice, sustaining
me with her encouragement, reviving me by her enthu-
siasm with an unimaginable prodigality of pains, pre-
visions, wise and gentle words, ingenious and persist-
ent efforts; more than this, she has still more often re-
nounced herself, sacrificed what was legitimately im-
perative in her own nature in order the better to carry
my burden, which she has made her wealth and her sole
luxury.

FRANZ LISZT 209

"I should have liked to possess an immense genius
in order to celebrate this sublime soul in sublime har-
monies. Alas, only with difficulty can I succeed in stam-
mering a few scattered notes which the wind carries
away. If, nevertheless, something remains of my musi-
cal labor (at which I have toiled with a dominant pas-
sion for ten years) , may it be the pages in which Caro-
lyne, through the inspiration of her heart, has played
the greatest part.

"I beg her to pardon me for the sad insufficiency of
my works as an artist, as well as for the still more dis-
tressing insufficiency of the good intentions that have
been mingled with so many failures and incongruities.
She knows that the most poignant sorrow of my life
is not to have felt myself sufficiently worthy of her,
not to have been able to raise myself, to maintain my-
self firmly, in that pure and holy region which is the
abode of her spirit and her virtue.

"At the same time that I owe to Carolyne the little
good that is in me, I owe her also the small share of
material goods that I possess in a word, the little
that I am and the very little that I have. She has as-
sumed the burden of the conservation, the augmenta-
tion, and the regular investing of the funds that consti-
tute my heritage, amounting to about 220,000
francs. I beg Carolyne to see that this heritage which
I leave is divided as simply as possible in equal parts
between my two daughters, Blandine and Cosima.

"It goes without saying that the small annuity which
my very dear mother, Mme. Anna Liszt, in Paris, has
drawn for a number of years from the interest of my
property, is to be preserved for her intact.

210 FRANZ LISZT

"There is in contemporary art one name that is
already glorious and will be more and more so : Rich-
ard Wagner. His genius has been a torch to me; I
have followed it, and my friendship for Wagner has
retained all the character of a noble passion. At one
time (some ten years ago), I dreamed of a new period
for Weimar comparable to that of Karl August, of
which Wagner and I were to be the coryphaei, as
Goethe and Schiller once were. The meanness, not to
say the villainy, of certain local circumstances, all sorts
of jealousies and absurdities elsewhere as well as here,
have prevented the realization of this dream which
would have redounded to the honor of the present
Grand Duke. This notwithstanding, I remain of the
same feeling, preserve the same conviction, which it was
all too easy to make evident to everyone. And I beg
Carolyne to assent to this by continuing after rny death
our affectionate relations with Wagner. Who better
than she can understand the lofty impulse so resolutely
communicated to art by Wagner, his divine sentiment
of love and poetry?"

A few special legacies follow for the Princess and
her daughter, Bulow, his favorite pupils and friends:
Bronsart, Cornelius, Brendel, Pohl, Tausig, etc.

"Finally, I ask Carolyne further to send from me to
Mme. Caroline d'Artigaux, born Countess de Saint-
Cricq (at Pau) , one of my talismans mounted in a ring.

"And now I once more fall upon my knees with
Carolyne to pray, as we have often done together.

"I desire to be buried simply, without any pomp,
and, if possible, at night."

Having thus covered with his handwriting twelve

FRANZ LISZT 211

large pages, Liszt shut them up in a drawer of Caro-
lyne's bureau. It seemed to him that he had brought
order into his thoughts and feelings. A time of soli-
tude and voluntary exile appeared to him now neces-
sary. The future depended on the council of cardinals
charged with deciding on the affair of the Princess, and
he trusted to her, knowing that she was tenacious.

She was so indeed. As she did not win her case
quickly enough to suit her, in spite of the support of
Cardinal Antonelli, the Princess Wittgenstein appeared
unexpectedly at an audience of Pope Pius IX. "Holy
Father," she cried, falling at his feet, "I come to seek
protection from the representative of divine justice."
She described all she had suffered in terms so pathetic
that the Pope promised to see that justice was done her ^ '
saying later on several occasions : "That woman over-
whelmed me." A few days afterwards all Rome
learned with surprise that His Holiness had approved
the decree of the Roman Consistory. Believing that
her cause was finally won, the Princess wished to return
at once to Weimar ; but a prelate who was one of her
friends advised her not to hurry away.

"Your Excellency, stay a little longer. Wait."

"But have I not the signature of the Holy Father?"

"Wait."

She did not leave, and she did well, for the Cardinal
of Lucca decided that the documents were insufficient.
It all had to be taken up from the beginning again.
And for more than a year Liszt waited, worked, grew
weary and wrote to Carolyne. He baptised his first
grand-daughter, to whom Cosima had given birth in
Berlin, Daniela-Senta. Her name suggested that of

212 FRANZ LISZT

the child who had disappeared and that of the grand-
mother: Senta is the name of a Wagnerian heroine.
He grew more and more weary, examining himself in
the light of his solitude. "My whole life," he said,
"is nothing but a long Odyssey of the sentiment of
love. I was fit for nothing but love, and hitherto,
alas, I have only been able to love badly. But, thanks
be to God, I have never loved evil, and every time I
have felt that I was doing evil my heart has been pro-
foundly contrite and humbled." At last, as the result
of repeating to himself: "What have I to do in this
world, unless it is to cease living according to the
world," he decided to set out for Paris.

It was spring. Twenty-six years had passed since
he left the France of Louis-Philippe. He found that
of Napoleon III. After he had embraced his mother,
his daughter Blandine and his son-in-law Ollivier, the
first friend he went to see was Berlioz. A poor, de-
jected, bitter Berlioz, who could only speak in a whis-
per, as if he were already leaning over his grave. He
dined with him, in the company of Ortigue (his Saint-
Simonian comrade) and the new Mme. Berlioz. A
mournful and desolate meal. Why had the artist so
obstinately insisted on isolating himself in this way?
The fact was that he no longer had any friends or par-
tisans, "neither the great sun of the public nor the
sweet shade of intimacy." The Journal des Debats
alone still supported the misunderstood composer, out
of regard for the brilliant feuilletonist. Berlioz still
employed, notwithstanding, his vainglorious vocabu-
lary. "The whole press is for me ; I have numberless
friends to support me ; I had the honor to dine with His

FRANZ LISZT 213

Majesty the Emperor . . . and all this is of no use to

me."

It was true. But was it prudence or envy that drove
him to keep silence about the famous production of
Tannhduser which had just taken place? Liszt, a
stranger to low sentiments, looked at him with aston-
ishment. And Berlioz, in a few days, took up his pen
with a harsh passion, recalling all the while the frank
and candid eyes of Franz.

There followed a call on Rossini, who gave him a
paternal greeting and chirruped with his flute-like voice
a thousand flattering compliments:

"Are those beautiful locks your own?" asked the
Italian, passing his hand through Liszt's mane.

"I am holding them as my estate."

"You are very fortunate, my young friend. You
see there are none left on my head, and I have scarcely
any teeth any longer, or any legs."

"And the music?"

"Just imagine, my amusement is to write sonatas for
the piano to which I attach pretty alimentary titles,
such as fresh butter, chick-peas, green peas, cherries
or apricots."

Liszt was soon invited to the house of the Princess
Metternich, to the Walewskis, the Rothschilds and
even to the Tuileries. Wherever he went, he created
all the stir of the old days, at the time of his concerts
as a child, when his lithographed portrait was sold
everywhere, adorned with the motto :

"This surprising combination of genius and infancy has out-
stripped the future, and, at the age of hope, has already caused
a memory to be born."

214 FRANZ LISZT

In those days, the Due de Chartres had given him a
Merry-Andrew doll. This time Louis Bonaparte made
him a Commander of the Legion of Honor. And the
all-powerful Princess Metternich once more made him
so thoroughly the fashion that the noise of it reached
even to the retreat in the Hotel Montaigne where
Marie d'Agoult meditated and worked.

Franz was invited there one evening and he went,
not without some apprehension. It was sixteen years
since they had seen each other. Had she changed?
Arabella, with her fine face, her sharply cut profile,
that grand air of an offended queen no, time had only
dulled with a little additional gravity a beauty that
had always been serious. She still had the same clear
eye, which ferreted out every thought and so strangely
mistook every sentiment. The head, in fact, carried
on with the soul relations that were only very vaguely
akin. Her sins were always sins of the intelligence
and her senses were without authority. Franz was
prepared to speak of their daughters, but she allowed
him no time for this; without any preamble she
launched into political questions.

"Well, what do you think of the question of na-
tionalities?"

Liszt was disconcerted. She went on :

"Hungary, Poland. . . . Cavour."

She had certainly changed very little. Franz be-
thought himself of an article by Lamartine on Italy.
She declared it was stupid.

"And yet it has made a sensation in the government,
where the unity of Italy is regarded as a phantom by
well-informed people *"

FRANZ LISZT 215

"No one who has spent even eight days there could
share M. de Lamartine's opinion/' she said in a pro-
phetic tone.

And she unfolded her mind on the new Rome of
Gioberti, on Franchi and free thought, on the Pied-
montese spirit and the Revolution. As Liszt preserved
silence, she suddenly interrupted herself, and, with her
pretty smile :

"Will you do me the kind favor of coming to dinner
some evening?"

"Very gladly, but it will be difficult for me to find
a free day."

"Then perhaps you would lunch with me?"

"Thank you, I should be happy to."

"Whom would you like me to invite?"

"Anyone who seems good to you anyone to whom
I would seem good enough to deserve the honor of be-
ing at your house."

"But tell me . . ."

"Ronchaud, for instance."

"He is always a bore."

"Anyone you choose, then or why not the two of
us alone, or tutti quanti? But I warn you that I have
lost my old sober habits. I eat a great deal, my appe-
tite having come from dining with so many people."

It was arranged for a Friday. The Countess col-
lected at her table Teissier, editor of I' Illustration, Mr.
Browne of the Morning Post and M. Home of the
Debats. Mme. d'Agoult declared that there was no
longer any good taste in France, or any good breed-
ing; that all interest in things of the intelligence had
disappeared ; that there was a great deal of building,

216 FRANZ LISZT

but, for all that, no architecture; finally, that since
1848, of which however she had been a fervent apostle,
everything had been levelled down. Franz retorted
that in his opinion the French were always marvel-
lously intelligent and that the seven ancient wonders
of the world, taken togther, did not equal the recon-
struction of Paris undertaken by the Emperor Napo-
leon. Whereupon, immediately after the coffee, he
was the first to withdraw. But eight days later he re-
turned without having himself announced and found
Marie alone. They spoke first of Mme. Sand, whose
last two romances had had a decided success.

"M. de Girardin," she said, "took it into his head
to make me meet her again, but this attempt to patch
things up miscarried."

"You had parted with too much unfriendliness."

"But you remained her firm friend, didn't you?"
she asked in reply.

"Your falling out made a coldness in my relations
with her, for although in my heart I thought you were
wrong I still took your side."

"I believe the opposite."

"Without any reason, just as of old."

They talked of Goethe, then of George Eliot, who
had recently come to see Liszt at Weimar, and whom
people regarded as the most brilliant rival of George
Sand. A burning subject, on account of Nelida. She
slipped again into history and politics, remarked that
she was writing for the Siecle and a new journal
founded by her friend Neftzer, the Temps.

Franz was surprised that the conversation preserved
this official tone. How different it had been with Caro-

FRANZ LISZT 217

line de Saint-Cricq, whose soul had immediately opened
like a carnation placed in water. He spoke of Wag-
ner, of the modern musical movement, and Marie de-
clared that she was struck by the voluntary isolation
in which Liszt held himself. Then he explained the
long perseverance of his artistic life, the part given
to the public and that which remained in reserve for
the artist, the identity of his former efforts with his
ideas of today, and finally the permanence of that "I"
which she had always found so odious. And suddenly
Marie understood the profound meaning of that life
of which Franz himself had extinguished the facile
brilliance. Her face was covered with tears. Blushing
with modesty, Franz rose and kissed her forehead.

"Come, Marie," he said, "let me speak to you in the
language of peasants. May God bless you. Do not
wish me ill."

She could not reply, and they remained a moment
standing, holding each other's hands. She spoke again
of Rome, of Bellaggio, then of Blandine and Cosima,
This was the only time their names were uttered.

"Why," she asked, "did you not make an artist of
Cosima ?"

He did not know whether he should have laughed.
Then, before they separated, she said again :

"I shall always remain faithful to Italy, and to Hun-
gary too."

As he descended the stairs, the image of Daniel ap-
peared to his father. His name had not passed their
lips. He remembered one of those maxims that Marie
loved to polish for her journal: "I have known those

218 FRANZ LISZT

who, seeking happiness, have found joy, and everything
has ended in tears."

Wagner, who had left for Vienna before Liszt's ar-
rival, returned to Paris a few days before his depar-
ture. They saw each other several times, in the glare
of the world. Pardoned by amnesty a little while be-
fore, he was now preparing to return to Germany.
For Liszt this was a limitless joy. At a luncheon at
Gounod's, Richard introduced to him Baudelaire, a
new adept of his music. The latter had just written a
courageous brochure on Tannhauser, and he presented
it to Liszt with his poems. They understood each
other at once, for, like Tannhauser himself, these two
artists, saturated with enervating delights, aspired to
sorrow. Franz carried Baudelaire about with him
wherever there was some chance of bettering his for-
tunes, but the latter's spirit, Wagner observed,
"seemed to creep along in the rut of despair."

At last, after a six weeks' stay in Paris, Liszt re-
turned to the Altenburg which, in all its beauty, he
prepared to put out of his life. The news from Rome
was confused indeed. The plan for the marriage
seemed to be still hanging fire, but the only deep desire
which he had now was to flee for many years from
these exhausted spots. He arranged all his papers,
packed up everything he owned that was of value, or-
ganized this new change of residence for his soul to
some unknown country of love. No more Weimar, no
more Grand Dukes ; but was he going to establish him-
self in France, or at Berlin, near Cosima? With
Blandine, at Saint-Tropez ? At Rome ? There would

FRANZ LISZT 219

be time to decide after the Composers' Festival, which
opened at Weimar at the beginning of the month of
August.

For this solemn occasion, Liszt kept open house for
a few days longer. One after another his friends ar-
rived: Biilow, Bronsart, Tausig, Cornelius, Brendel
and his wife, the Olliviers and Draseke, and Miss An-
derson, the old governess of the Princess Marie, made
them as comfortable as she could. They all found
themselves reunited at breakfast, after which they scat-
tered, each running off to his own rehearsal. In the
green-room of the theatre they studied the Faust-
Symphony, which Biilow was going to conduct. Liszt
was there, giving advice to all the assembled compos-
ers. Suddenly a rumor spread, the great door opened,
the musicians all jumped to their feet, and, in the
midst of the general emotion, Wagner appeared. He
walked straight up to Franz, and the two friends,
without being able to say a word, gave each other a
long embrace. Thus at last they found each other
again in this Weimar, dedicated for a dozen years to
the glory of Wagner, at the moment when Liszt was
on the point of quitting it for a long time. It was the
fatal destiny of this friendship to be incessantly cut
by long separations, to be broken and tied together
again, to be stormy and yet necessary. On the day
when Liszt had come to settle at Weimar, he had been
welcomed there by a letter in which a man whose power
he felt had offered himself as a serf. Now that he
was leaving after these fruitful years of struggle and
defeat, this same man, ten times, twenty times thrown
to the ground, was still the serf of the same great

220 FRANZ LISZT

thought and poor in money to the point of destitution.
But from their double will was formed nevertheless
one of the most famous exaltations of the century.
Baudelaire called it "one of those solemn crises of art,
one of those conflicts into which critics, artists and
public are accustomed to throw confusedly all their
passions." It was truly a date, this month of August,
1 86 1, when the Faust-Symphony was played for Wag-
ner, who had brought in his valise the complete score
of Tristan und Isolde.

For Franz it was also a date of the heart. For now
the news came, secret but sure : the Pope had granted
the Princess's request. She could marry Liszt to-
morrow. When the festival was over, and while he
was awaiting the necessary documents for the mar-
riage, he made a short visit to his daughter before
rejoining Carolyne. Alone, with his trunks duly in-
ventoried and sealed, Franz shut himself up for a last
time in the old house of happiness. "It is impossible
for me to collect in a single focus the emotions of my
last hours at the Altenburg," he wrote to Carolyne.
"Each room, each piece of furniture, to the very steps
of the staircase and the turf of the garden, everything
is illumined with your love, without which I should feel
reduced to nothingness. ... I cannot contain my
tears. But after a last station at your prie-dieu, where
you always knelt with me before I set out on some
journey, I experienced a sort of feeling of liberation
that comforted me. ... In leaving this house, I re-
member that I am going to you and I draw a loftier
breath."

On October 14, he was at Marseilles. "These are

FRANZ LISZT 221

the last lines that I shall write you. My long exile is
near its end. In five days I shall find once more in you
fatherland, home and altar. May the mercy and pity
of God, which free the indigent from their dust and
raise the poor from their ditch, be praised without end.
May I be able to give you days of consolation and
serenity as the evening of your life approaches."

He was due to arrive in Rome on October 20.
Everything was arranged for the ceremony to take
place two days later, on the 22nd, the day of Saint
Liszt, on which the great man was to celebrate his fif-
tieth birthday. The church of San Carlo al Corso
was all decorated with flowers. It was in the early
morning, at six o'clock, that the Princess Sayn-Wittgen-
stein, born Carolyne d'lwanowska, was to marry Franz
Liszt, composer of music.

XXII

ON the evening of the 2ist, they took communion
together. Then they passed the early hours of the
night together in the Princess's apartment in the Piazza
di Spagna. It was late and Liszt was just on the point
of going to bed when the bell announced a visitor. The
maid brought in an unknown and very much troubled
ecclesiastic who carried with him an urgent letter ad-
dressed to the Princess. This last-moment message
promised no good. It was indeed a piece of bad news :
at the demand of the Wittgenstein family, who stated
that the Princess had in no sense been forced to marry
and would therefore, by taking a new oath, perjure
herself, the Pope, overcome by scruples, ordered a com-
plete revision of the brief of annulment.

Fifteen years of efforts and hopes were thus entirely
ruined. The amazon of Woronince had not one mo-
ment of illusion : God ordained this renunciation. Obe-
dient and superstitious, she accepted at once the oppor-
tunity to enrich her love with this supreme sacrifice.
During this year and a half in Rome, moreover, she
had lived such a cloistered, such a theological life that
the outer side of her attachment scarcely interested her
any more. As with many passionate souls, the mo-
ment had come when her faith in life was growing
faint. Hard as it might be, this blow was no longer
able to cut her to the quick. On the contrary, it sepa-
rated her from the world, threw her forever into those

222

FRANZ LISZT 223

mystical regions where she was beginning her ascent to
God. And since now, through her very religion, she
found herself clear-sightedly disentangling the skein of
her feelings, she was able to see clearly into those of
Franz. Of course he still loved her. She remained
the bread that was necessary for this great unceasingly
hungry heart. But she no longer possessed the power
to satisfy him. During the time of their separation he
had Become more indifferent to her. It seemed as if
he had learned to do without the habit of happiness,
which had been one of the forces of their love. Age
had touched him too little for her to be able to count
upon its help. In this gray-haired young man she di-
vined a soul that was still as elastic as ever, ready for
every sort of rebound. She knew therefore that the
thought of a regular union had ceased to be a necessity
for him. She said as much to him and he agreed that
it was so. So she would no longer hear of imposing
this duty on him.

"I have a very clear feeling," she said, "that we are
not on this earth to fill a place but to serve an idea and
accomplish a work. God knows what it has cost me
never to see Woronince or Weimar again. But if I
detached myself so easily from the happy Podolian
house where I planted the flowers myself under my
parents' eyes, it was because Weimar seemed to me an
idea greater than Woronince. And if, later, I gave up
the hermitage where I had adored you, it was because
Rome is an idea grander still than Weimar."

Finding in her very sacrifice the means of saving her
love, she conceived from this moment the thought of
dedicating Liszt to God. Since he had begun to inter-

224 FRANZ LISZT

est himself in church music, he must henceforth apply
himself to this alone. His life and his work would ac-
quire from this the beautiful gradation that would ele-
vate them by successive phases from the success of the
virtuoso to the purest glory of the spirit. She knew
him well enough to feel that this rhythm corresponded
well with his most intimate need. Besides, did not this
decision come in the nick of time and like a redemption
merited after the past, so full of difficulties and bitter-
ness, through which he had just come ?

Thus were opened in the heart of Rome two new
mystic cells : one dedicated to music and the other to
religious literature that in which Liszt immediately
shut himself up to finish his Legend of Saint Elizabeth
and that in which the Princess Wittgenstein began to
build the mountain of her writings. Two cells; some-
thing new for these beings who, for twelve years, had
possessed everything in common. But Carolyne knew
also that to keep her beloved there was no surer method
than to give him his liberty. She lived alone in her
apartment. Surrounded with green plants, palms,
flowers, with the shutters closed all day long, a few
candles lighted to illumine her papers, she lay in the
chaise-longue in which she worked and planned her
renunciation. She said to herself: "One cannot have
everything. It is not enough to do as Polycrates did,-
throw an insignificant ring as a sop to fate. Fate
throws it back with contempt. Fate demands its trib-
ute from every destiny, and when the latter refuses
to pay she imposes it, for she always has death, sick-
ness, and all the ills at her command. It seems fool-
hardy to wish to have everything, and, rather than lose

FRANZ LISZT 225

it, I have renounced. Not without sorrow, a double
sorrow ! But it is the very sorrow that makes the ran-
som. After such a complicated drama, the denoue-
ment cannot take place simply. Victory and sor-
row alternate, but the good God softens the sorrow
when one is not puffed up with the victory. There is
our beautiful Catholic secret, to be understood only
with the heart : we do not seek to close the wounds of
life, to cure our sorrows. But we ask God to let us
live in peace, in serenity, in activity, in contentment,
and even in gaiety, with these wounds and these sor-

rows."

Visitors were admitted in the evening, at the hour
when the master came. They passed first through a
little room containing a table laden with innumerable
busts of Liszt. In the drawing-room, forty gigantic
church candles were fastened to the walls one for each
year of love all gilded and bedizened. One saw
nothing but books, on the tables, on the chairs, on the
floor, and everywhere those palms, those flowers. A
few engravings placed about at haphazard, among the
old tomes. The Princess lay stretched out in the cen-
tre in a haze of tobacco smoke, her head enveloped
in a white cap adorned with ribbons of every color of
the rainbow. She had grown stout. Her ugliness had
increased. But the same passion still sharpened her
glances and her words. Politics was the centre of all
their discussions, that of the Church especially. Liszt
and the Princess did not often agree, for his knowledge
was that of men and hers that of books. He always
declared for submission, she for revolt, the new spirit.
Several cardinals came to see her, several schismatic

226 FRANZ LISZT

priests. Sometimes Liszt sat down at the piano.
Towards eleven o'clock everyone left and the Princess
took up her pencils again.

Franz lived at first at 113 Via Felice, modestly
enough, and buried himself in his work. His Roman
friends dropped in at the end of the day : the Duke of
Sermoneta, the most learned commentator on Dante,
Donna Laura Minghetti, the wife of the Prime Minis-
ter, Cardinal Lucien Bonaparte, Mgr. Hohenlohe,
Mgr. Lichnowsky, the brother of his friend Felix, his
pupils Tarnowsky, Bache, Bourgaud, Sgambati and
others. And as his social duties soon multiplied, Liszt
resolved to escape by choosing for himself a more
trustworthy retreat.

Scarcely had he decided on this when a great unex-
pected blow fell and turned him still further towards
the inner life: his daughter Blandine died at Saint-
Tropez, after having given birth to a new Daniel.
Liszt immediately closed his too animated chambers
and accepted an offer of the keeper of the archives
at the Vatican who suggested that he should come and
live with him in the little monastery of the Madonna
del Rosario, on the Monte Mario. It was just outside
the town, in the Roman Campagna. In the course of
the summer of 1863, Liszt moved out into this solitude
where the bells were his sole companions. "I hear
those of three different churches which rise like aerial
sentinels. There is where happiness lies, in these things
that make us dream. He rose with the day, heard
mass, in the little church dedicated to the nine choirs
of angels, prayed, set to work at his Saint Elizabeth
and continued to write every day to Carolyne. But he

FRANZ LISZT 227

loved her now "in the eternal life" and believed himself
henceforth purified of all earthly affection. The public,
even the musical world, no longer existed for him. He
had no intercourse save with the angels, his ruled
paper, and a few ecclesiastics who were attracted to
this saintly musical hermit.

Pius IX came to call upon him at Monte Mario.
Liszt played for him on the harmonium and ran his
fingers over his little working piano. They talked of
the great reforms which the artist was planning for re-
ligious music. The holy pontiff would perhaps have
liked to offer him the direction of his chapel, but the
College of Cardinals would have opposed this because
he was not a priest. The modern tendencies of his
music frightened them also. The Pope was pleased
with Liszt's society, received him in private audience,
gave him a beautiful cameo bearing an image of the
Virgin and invited him to hear a low mass which he
was going to say himself in honor of Saint Ignatius.
Mgr. Hohenlohe, who was to receive the next car-
dinal's hat, invited him to come and see him at the
Villa d'Este. Thus for three years he had been living
surrounded with prelates when the most urgent letters
came begging his assistance at the music-festival at
Carlsruhe. He refused at first, then allowed himself
to be persuaded by Bulow, and the homesick pilgrim re-
sumed the road to Germany, reading on the way the
Roman Sketches of Mgr. Gerbet.

At Strasbourg, he was present at the high mass and
sang with all his might : Domine Salvum fac Impera-
torem nostrum Napoleonem. At Belfort, he bought
Manon Lescaut and sobbed as he reread the end of the

228 FRANZ LISZT

romance, from the attack of the constables at the gates
of Paris to New Orleans: "How can one not feel him-
self Des Grieux at this last moment," he cried, "when
he broke his sword so as to dig a deep grave and place
in it the idol of his heart, after carefully wrapping all
her garments about her to prevent the sand from touch-
ing her?"

Exalted by this adolescent reading, Liszt arrived at
Carlsruhe. It was only to learn that Billow, gravely
ill, was not coming, nor his friend Pohl, nor Bronsart,
nor Wagner. Cosima alone had come to meet her
father. He was a little indemnified for these disap-
pointments by the enthusiastic welcome that was given
to his works. But as soon as the festival was over,
Liszt set out for Munich, where Billow was confined to
his bed. Hans was in a sad state, moral as well as
physical. A nervous illness alternately paralysed his
legs and his arms. And this at the moment when the
young king Ludwig II had just appointed him conduc-
tor of his orchestra, when the music of the future had
experienced its most unexpected triumph ! But Wag-
ner learned of Liszt's arrival, invited him for a visit,
came to Munich to get him and carried him off on the
spot to his villa on the Lake of Starnberg.

For a year now his existence had been transformed.
On a certain evening in May, 1864, when, finding him-
self at his wit's end in Stuttgart, he was wondering
once more if it was worth while continuing to live, the
king's messenger had appeared before him. The latter
had handed Wagner a ring, just as once the Grand
Duchess Paulowna had handed hers to Liszt. And

FRANZ LISZT 229

this had been the sign of his deliverance. "My friend,"
he wrote two days later to Mme. Wille, "I should be
the most ungrateful of men if I did not at once inform
you of my immense good fortune. You know that the
young King of Bavaria sent for me. This very day I
have been taken to him. He is so beautiful and so
charming, he is so rich in heart and mind that I am
afraid of seeing his life vanish in this world of iron
like a divine, inconstant dream. He loves me with
the ardor and depth of a first love; he knows every-
thing I have written and understands me as well as I
understand myself. He wishes me to remain with him
forever, to work, rest, have my works produced. He
will give me everything that is necessary for this. I
am to finish the Nibelungenring and have it played all
together as a tetralogy in whatever manner suits me.
I am my own master. I have unlimited power. I arn
no longer a petty orchestra conductor, but just myself
and the King's friend."

"Solomon was mistaken," wrote Franz, in his turn,
to Carolyne. "There is something new under the sun.
I have been fully convinced of this since last evening.
... I have named Wagner the Glorious. The high
fortune he has at last encountered will sweeten as much
as possible a few harsh traits in his character. Things
are extremely favorable for him in every way. Nat-
urally we have had a very long talk, five hours. At
bottom there cannot be any change between us." And
after this conversation, in which the two friends opened
their hearts once more, Wagner sat down at the piano
and played for the "only one" his Meistersdnger.

230 FRANZ LISZT

"A masterpiece of humor, wit and vivacious grace,"
cried Liszt. "It is as light and beautiful as Shake-
speare."

In exchange, Franz produced his Beatitudes. All
misunderstandings between them had disappeared.
But the shadow glimpsed on another face caused a few
heavy silences : the face of Bulow, in which Franz had
read a distress that made him sick at heart.

"The walls groan and sing. I weep and weep again,
I can do nothing but weep, prostrated before you, my
good angel. You are everywhere here, and it is
through your love that God descends into my heart."
Liszt had arrived at the Altenburg, and he wandered
through the rooms where the absent friend was present
in every object. Ah, how this Weimar resembled a
dead woman whose beauty had suddenly faded away !
The Grand Duke was absent. Dingelstedt had ended
by embroiling everyone. In the theatre they were giv-
ing The Daughter of the Regiment. Franz had only
one desire: to flee. So he set out for Berlin, where,
on Cosima's arm, he went and knelt at Daniel's grave.
But the German atmosphere weighed upon him too
heavily. He longed to escape and soon after took his
daughter to Paris. They were received at the Olliviers'
house, where Liszt occupied Blandine's room. On the
floor above, his robust old mother was living, still in
perfect health. But he thought only of Rome. Ten
days later he found again his table at Monte Mario, his
work, "all the space necessary for his career and his
ambition."

The Legend of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary was

FRANZ LISZT 231

finished. Liszt thought that his own life resembled
that of his angelic compatriot. Hungarian like her,
he had truly loved, he said, only heaven and the climes
of sanctity. Like Elizabeth, he had lived in Thuringia,
very close to that Wartburg which she had made illus-
trious with her labors and her charity. Finally, like
her, he aspired to die in the odor of sanctity. In a few
images he summed up musically everything that was
essential in a life of which love was the sole rhythm.

When he had completed his Legend, Liszt, in all sim-
plicity of soul, wished to draw closer to the heart of
the Church. For a long time he had thought of tak-
ing minor orders which, without binding him by vows,
would still confer upon him a reflection of sacerdotal
dignity. He opened his mind to Cardinal Hohenlohe,
who strongly supported a project that put a definite
end to any idea of marriage on the part of his kins-
woman, the Princess Carolyne. No one but Liszt
suspected how far she had renounced this. From now
on, Franz prepared himself with the ardor of a Levite
for his consecration.

The ceremony was arranged for April 22. A few
days before, Liszt made a retreat with the Lazarists
whence, hour by hour, he wrote for his friend a bulle-
tin of his soul. They imposed upon him no other aus-
terity. Save for a little additional spiritual reading,
it was almost the same as his life at Monte Mario.
He rose at half-past six, meditated, took coffee in his
room. Mass at half-past eight, spiritual reading, in
solitude; a visit to the Holy Sacrament; dinner in the
refectory at noon. They placed him at a table by him-

232 FRANZ LISZT

self. No one spoke, and this was very agreeable to
him. He did not understand very well the reading
which one of the Brothers conducted from a high ros-
trum, from the beginning to the end of the meal. They
gave him his coffee in his own room, an attention for
which he was grateful. Rest for an hour and a half.
Spiritual reading, a visit to the Holy Sacrament, a walk
in the garden till half-past three. Meditation alone.
Supper at eight o'clock, silence and reading, as at din-
ner. The Father Superior made him a visit. At ten
o'clock all lights were extinguished. "I should be happy
if our dear Father Ferraris would be in the Hohenlohe
chapel on Tuesday morning to confess me before the
ceremony. Whatsoever is born of God overcometh
the world; and this is the victory that overcometh the
world, even our faith. Epistle of today. Low Sun-
day. Saint John."

On the 24th : "I thank you for your little notes. All
my memories of you are of acts of grace. As for my
letters, I should be very glad for you to keep them.
Whatever I can say about myself I can say only to
you."

On the 25th he rose before six o'clock. He said a
few prayers, heard mass and continued the reading of
the Treatise on Holy Orders by M. Olier, cure and
founder of Saint Sulpice. He made his confession and
received the tonsure. "The tonsure should be in the
form of a crown," he wrote, "so that on the head of
the cleric and all the clergy should be imprinted the
image of the crown of thorns of our Lord Jesus Christ.
It signifies also the royal dignity of him who is ad-
mitted to the ranks of the clergy." The words of

FRANZ LISZT 233

which the ceremony consists are drawn from Psalm
XVI. Liszt uttered them from his heart as well as
with his lips in unison with the Bishop, while the latter
was bestowing upon him the signs of the tonsure : "The
Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup."
A few prayers and Psalm LXXXIV: "How amiable
are thy tabernacles, O Lord of Hosts!"

When everything was over, Franz took possession
of his new apartments, adjoining those of Hohenlohe,
Grand Almoner of the Holy Father, in the Vatican
itself. His door was just opposite the Loggia of
Raphael, two steps from Michael Angelo's Sistine
Chapel. A little before the Ave Maria, the Abbe
Liszt was received in audience by the Pope. Pius IX
welcomed him with special kindness.

"The gospel for this day," said the Abbe, "teaches
us that the harvest is great. I am only, alas, a very
small and very weak laborer, but I feel happy that I
belong to you now a little more, and I beg Your Holi-
ness to command me."

The Pope said:

"You now have to undertake a few theological
studies."

"I am not entirely without knowledge of these and
I shall take them up again with great zeal and joy."

When his mother learned the news, she wept.

From this time on, we see the Abbe regularly reading
his breviary. Rome loved to watch him passing in a
barouche, seated between two link-boys. He began
his studies and served mass for Prince Hohenlohe.
Less than a month after he had taken the minor orders,
he wrote to the Princess : "My day yesterday was spent

234 FRANZ LISZT

in reading fifty pages of the Catechism of Perseverance
in Italian.'' But the great Liszt had already begun
to reappear under the cassock, for he added in the
same breath "... and in seeking a few touches on the
piano for the Indian jugglery of VAfricaine"

XXIII

IT was plain that the cassock had made of Liszt
only an intermittent abbe. In Rome he always wore
it. When he travelled, it often remained in his trunk.
How, for example, could he have worn it before the
five hundred Hungarian performers of the Elizabeth,
during the rehearsals which he himself directed at
Pest in the month of August, 1865? They knew he
possessed it; there was no need to add to the smiles.
For the rest, he made no mystery of his devotion. He
stayed with the priest, heard mass every morning and
followed in his surplice the procession at Saint
Stephen's. The Elizabeth was acclaimed, the Dante-
Symphony encored, and for the first time in a long
while Liszt gave a public performance of his two
Legends. In spite of his real humility, he still found
a little enjoyment in popular triumphs. Thus one eve-
ning, at the house of his friend Baron Augusz, whose
guest he was, he had the piano rolled in front of the
open window and played one of his rhapsodies in the
presence of eight thousand listeners, who gathered to
give him an ovation.

In the spring of the following year, he accepted an
invitation to conduct his Mass of Gran at Paris. A
very few weeks before his departure for France, his
mother died suddenly. This simple, good person was ,
tenderly wept by her great son whom she had always'

235

236 FRANZ LISZT

found a little intimidating. Franz and his daughter
Cosima were thus the only ones left of the family
now, and Liszt was disturbed by all sorts of evil
presentiments. It was without joy, without enthusiasm,
that he conducted his Mass at Saint-Eustache, in spite
of the extraordinary crowd. The collection and the
money for the seats amounted, it was said, to 50,000
francs. But the execution was feeble, the choirs poorly
trained, and the majority of the critics tore the work
of the illustrious abbe to pieces. What gave him the
most pain was the indifference and worse of his friends.
D'Ortigue, always a Gregorian and anti-modern, made
a pun that spread everywhere : "Take this Caliszt from
me." As for Berlioz, "This mass," he said, "is the
negation of art." Such was the reply to the Berlioz
Week organized by Liszt and Weimar. But was it not
necessary to forgive much to a composer whom ill for-
tune pursued with such constancy? To justify himself
and reply to Berlioz's criticism, Liszt invited him to
his rooms with D'Ortigue and the violinist Leon Kreut-
zer. With his score in his hands he discussed every
one of the accused bars. By his magical execution he
had already two-thirds converted them when Berlioz
suddenly rose and went out. ... A pity, but it was
honorable to undergo in company with Wagner the as-
saults of his ill-humor.

The opinion of the newspapers was divided. Too
much glory surrounded Liszt for him not to have
his partisans. "Success, yes even a sensation," he
wrote to Carolyne, "but a difficult situation. Saint
Gregory will help us." The Credo was regarded as
the weakest and most inharmonious part of the Mass.

FRANZ LISZT 237

Mme. d'Agoult was of this opinion, and she made it
known in La Liberte. Franz decided not to go to see
her, although in spite of, or perhaps because of, the
cassock he was more of a lion than ever. The Em-
peror, the Nuncio, the ambassadors, everybody re-
garded it as an honor to receive the abbe. But the
hour of the day which he preferred was that which he
spent every morning, between seven and eight, at the
church of Saint Thomas Aquinas. "The breviary
is also the greatest of all music." His old friend
Rossini told everyone that Liszt composed masses
in order to accustom himself to saying them ; but Franz
had suspected for many years that his celebrity was an
obstacle to his reputation. "As long as people applaud
me as a pianist they will criticise me as a composer."
They would have to end by understanding that, so
far as the virtuoso was concerned, he had been dead for
a long time.

Marie was not discouraged. She wanted to see him.
Ollivier urged his father-in-law so much that one day
he decided to make this always tiresome call. This
time she proceeded to announce to him that she was
getting ready to publish her confessions. What did
he think of that? Oh! It was nothing very new,
unless she was more of a woman of letters than he sup-
posed her. This project at least clearly placed between
them the question of the true and the false. These
were ominous words, but it was a good thing to have
them uttered if they wished to avoid a resumption of
the old war between them.

"And this is to be a romance?"

"What isn't one?"

238 FRANZ LISZT

"Guermann in your Nelida was very stupidly con-
ceived."

The conversation could scarcely be pursued in this
tone, but Liszt wanted to put an end to what he called
the doctrinal sentimentality of the Countess.

"Forgive me, Marie, for being a little sharp in my
expressions. Unfortunately, there is no agreeable way
of saying some things. There would be something im-
moral in continuing any spiritual intercourse between
us."

And they separated with an inner conviction that
this time would be the last. Liszt was not saddened
by it, any more than he was relieved. This final fare-
well to the past was a part of the renunciation of self
in which, for several years, he had found more and
more delight. It was to some extent that sentiment of
self-efiacement which exalts every artist when he finds
himself most alone in the face of eternity; the moment
when he sees his life most consummated, most detached
from him. Only at present Liszt contemplated his
life with just enough detachment to allow him to dis-
regard what was inessential to it and to apply himself
all the better to tracing its inner path.

To know God, to love God, love, only that, to
attain love by means of the spirit, sentiment by means
of the intelligence, to pour through his work the pleni-
tude of his heart, such was the brightly illumined de-
vice of his soul. Not love through faith, like that
of Saint Peter; not love through hope, like that of
the good thief; not the love of David, through contri-
tion, humility and a broken heart; but the love of the
tylagdalen, love in every way simple and in spite of

FRANZ LISZT 239

everything. The soul of Liszt was like some feminine
souls which, through the sorrows, the deformities and
the worst experiences of life, emerge intact, in all the
purity of their first flower. However demoniacal the
years may be, they take nothing, as they pass, from
these angelic beings. It is of them that Pascal cries:
"Oh, how happy are they who, with entire freedom and
an invincible propensity of their will, love perfectly
and freely what they are obliged to love by necessity."
Mgr. Hohenlohe was made a cardinal at this time
and left the Vatican. Franz, almost immediately upon
his return to Rome, moved also and established him-
self again at Monte Mario, where he set to work calmly
at his Christus. Carolyne would have liked to make
him work more actively, but Liszt was less and less
interested in his celebrity. He was arriving quite
naturally at the santa indiferenza, while at Munich
Biilow was having his Saint Elizabeth presented, with
brilliant success, by order of the King. His inspira-
tion had not deserted him, however, for he wrote a
Coronation Mass in three weeks (for the coronation
of Francis Joseph in Hungary) . It was barely finished
when he was obliged to move again, and he fixed his
choice on the monastery of Santa Francesca Romana.
Situated between the Basilica of Constantine and the
Arch of Titus, it had a unique view over the Forum,
and Franz's window looked out on the Temple of
Venus. As he was now nearer his friends, the life of
the world once more drew him a little, and he in turn,
once a week, received visitors and pupils. An agitated,
unstable period, in the course of which nevertheless he

240 FRANZ LISZT

finished his Christus: it had occupied him for two years.
Then there were new journeys.

To Of en, first (that is, Buda, the twin city of Pest),
where the Emperor was crowned King of Hungary to
the sound of Liszt's new Mass. To Weimar, next,
whither Karl Alexander had invited him for the festi-
val he was giving in commemoration of the eight hun-
dredth anniversary of the Wartburg. Liszt appeared
there for the first time publicly in his cassock. His old
friends were much disconcerted by this ; but they soon
saw that Liszt was in one of his most beautiful moods,
his face peaceful and serene. He directed his Eliza*
beth, that great laic hymn to sanctity, and carried ofi
a gorgeous triumph of tears and enthusiasm. But he
did not think of his renown and cultivated his emotions
much more. It was a delicious anguish to find himself
at t&e Altenburg again. "Thirteen years of joys and
sorrows, of Wahrheit und Dichtung, crowded upon me,
sang, wept, cried, groaned, shone in that spot." And
he drank deep of his gratitude to Carolyne, dismissed
every profane idea, even avoided passing through the
Karlplatz where he might have been surprised by mem-
ories that he had decisively conquered.

The Grand-ducal family entertained him for a few
days, and Karl Alexander insisted with pressing benev-
olence upon Liszt's reestablishing himself at Weimar,
at least for a month or two each year. He did not say
either yes or no ; he was troubled in spite of himself
by the idea that the Eternal City might cost him a part
of the work he had still to bring forth. Weimar, after
all, had been nothing but a mirage, and from all sides
they were inviting him to connect himself with the

FRANZ LISZT 241

great musical centres of Austria and Germany. Were
not his works and those of Wagner now the object of
a general curiosity? Neither yes nor no.

He fled the temptation and went to Munich. Bulow
was there now as director of the new Conservatory
and he conducted the great performances at the Opera.
Forty-eight hours after his arrival, Liszt, concealed at
the rear of a box, listened to Tannhduser. Then Lo-
hengrin. A packed house, general enthusiasm. The
King was there, carrying a bouquet for his fiancee, the
Duchess Sophie (later the Duchess d'Alengon). Wag-
ner alone was absent, the victim of popular opinion
and of the ultramontane party which accused him of
having, in eighteen months, perverted a twenty-year-
old prince and squandered the funds of the State. In
spite of his celebrity, in spite of the King's love, he
had been obliged to return to the solitudes of Switzer-
land, but this time no longer as a disinherited man.
Vanquished but glorious, duly pensioned by his bene-
factor and applauded by all the youth of Europe, he
occupied at Tribschen, on the Lake of Lucerne, a com-
fortable house where he worked without fear of need.
But Liszt was not unaware that beside the public drama
of this destiny another was unfolding, privately,
secretly, which for several years now had been tearing
at the three beings to whom alone, aside from Caro-
lyne, he was attached : Wagner, Billow and Cosima.

The affair had started at Reichenhall, in Upper
Bavaria, after the Weimar festival of 1861. Cosima
was taking a cure there when her father, her sister,
Ollivier and Wagner came to make her a visit. During
the four years that she had been married and living in

242 FRANZ LISZT

Berlin Wagner had only seen her once, during her
wedding journey, at his house, in his refuge at Zurich.
He found her just as she had been in Paris, shy and
seductive. This ardent and concentrated man of al-
most fifty, so unhappy in his own household, expanded
in the company of this beautiful feminine Liszt whose
soul he divined that he had attracted just as he had
captured that of her father. The lively Franco-
Hungarian blood of the young woman was electrified
by the voice of this formidable inventor of passionate
cries. What mattered the twenty-five years' differ-
ence in their ages? There is no age for some tem-
peraments. The decisions of the civil State scarcely
count for those who dare to say: "I carry rev-
olution with me everywhere." Ten years before,
Mathilde Wesendonck had written: "Wherever he
is, he brings life." In this shy and so precisely
brought-up Cosima, Wagner had met the one for whom
he had always been waiting, whom he demanded of
Liszt as the only music that was necessary for him and
whom he had met once before in Mathilde Wesen-
donck: "Give me a woman's heart, spirit, soul, in which
I can plunge entirely, which really understands me."
And Franz, in his daughter, brought him this soul,
this spirit, this heart, and her very flesh. .1 do not
know if there exists another such example of lasting
and powerful love. That of the Arnaulds, perhaps, in
which a whole family betrothed themselves to Jesus
Christ. With the Liszts two generations were united,
then three, in order to assure one man the flesh and
spirit that resulted and, in addition, the service of his
temple.

FRANZ LISZT 243

Reichenhall had been only an interrogation. Cosima
and Wagner saw each other again the following year
on the Rhine, then at Frankfort, where he sang for her,
for the sake of the symbol, the farewell of Wotan.
The ecstasy which he observed in Cosima's look seemed
to him full of serenity. Between them "everything was
silence and mystery." Shortly after the sudden death
of Blandine, they met again in the Gewandhaus at
Leipzig, where Billow was playing a new concerto of
Liszt. Veiled in black, pale, Cosima seemed to have
come from another planet. The whole outside world
became mere shadow-play for these two beings who
were already living entirely in one another. Yet they
said nothing. It was only on November 28 of the
following year, in Berlin, through which Wagner was
passing, that, seated side by side on the cushions of a
landau, they made their avowals. They hardly needed
to speak in order to understand the misfortune that
had befallen them.

Between Bulow and Wagner there had existed for
almost twenty years a spotless friendship, and in the
younger that same mad passion of adoration and devo-
tion as in Liszt. These two magnificent artists were,
in the purity of their hearts and the innocence of their
enthusiasm, surprisingly alike. Were they going to
be betrayed by those very ones to whom they had
given everything? One can understand how silence,
complicated by all these arrows of the mind, must have
seemed to Cosima and to Wagner more guilty and
more decisive than any words whatever.

But the time for resistance passed. Frau von Billow
had become for the one she loved everything she had

244 FRANZ LISZT

dreamed of being. First, his secretary. It was she
who saw to his correspondence, even that with the
King. It was she who took charge of the translations
and the newspapers. Regardless of her good name as
well as of her domestic peace, now that she shared
Wagner's daily life, this self-willed woman adopted
Liszt's device of "everything or nothing." And Biilow
ignored everything, wished to ignore everything per-
haps, unable to find any screen against the catastrophe
which he tried not to see, immersing himself in haras-
sing labor, with no respite except in illness. Daily
Cosima made a painful effort to save appearances.
But her nature was too strong to allow itself to be
broken by the suffering of others. When Wagner
set off again as an exile, she prepared without any dis-
simulation to join him.

Liszt knew this, and he knew that it was vain to
struggle against a woman formed in his own image.
But he loved Biilow and tried to mitigate his despair.
He spent his days with Hans, suggested journeys, a
concert-tour in Italy, wrote with him the regulations of
the new Conservatory. At last he decided to set out
for Lucerne in order to see Wagner and, if possible,
obtain a renunciation from him.

On Wednesday, October 9, 1867, at three o'clock,
he arrived at the villa of Tribschen, where Richard
was awaiting him. The man was changed, wasted, fur-
rowed. They shut themselves up in the composer's
study and did not stir out of it for half a day. Pres-
ently, in the soft afternoon, above the autumn roses,
blossomed the first notes of the third act of the Meis*

FRANZ LISZT 245

tersanger, which had just been written. Once more
the heart of Liszt swelled with happiness. "No one
but you," he cried, "no one but you. . . ." And he
asked himself if he had come for any other purpose
than to exalt his soul, cry out his joy and pray God
to forgive everything to those among men who created
beauty.

What Liszt asked of Wagner during this visit has
never been told. On his return to Munich he said:
"I have seen Napoleon at Saint Helena." The face
of the solitary had stricken him with awe and prevented
him from uttering his reproaches. There are men
whom the laws do not reach. Not even the laws of
the heart. The sadness of genius deprived of hap-
piness has in it something inhuman. One does not
prevail against these fierce, insensible monsters with
gentle phrases. No doubt Wagner had listened to
Liszt's first stammerings; then, when he sat down at
the piano, their confidences were swallowed up by the
music.

Biilow showed heroic fortitude. The newspapers
tried to make him ridiculous. This frail, passionate
man sank himself in work, dwelt with his sorrow. It
did not seem to him to be great enough until, for the
pleasure of the King, he had produced the Meister-
sanger and Tristan. He too had drunk the philtre.
But after a fearful year he gave way, exhausted.
Isolde had left. She had joined her lover. He did not
embark in pursuit of them on the ship of King Mark.

Nor did Liszt. But he was resolved henceforth to
impoverish his life still more, to strip it of its most

246 FRANZ LISZT

beautiful affections. He broke with his daughter and
with his old comrade. The honor of his soul required
this as much as the honor of God.

Then the Abbe Liszt and the Abbe Solfanelli re-
paired to Assisi. There Solfanelli said the mass in
the chapel in which Saint Francis died. They visited
the tree whose thorns, stained with blood, were con-
verted into roses (twelve red, twelve white) in the
presence of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. From
Assisi they went to Loretto, then Grotta Mare, on
the shore of the Adriatic.

Here the chief occupation of these two, ecclesiastics
was the reading of the breviary. People saw them,
now marching along the beach, now in some grove of
lemon-trees, seated side by side. Sometimes they
installed themselves in an old boat buried in the sand
where they recited together the Vespers and Compline.

XXIV

"WEIMAR has become a place of pilgrimage," Mme.
de Monkhanov (the former Mme. Kalergis) wrote to
her daughter. "All the German musicians go there to
render homage at the feet of the great man." This
great man was Liszt, reestablished at Weimar for
several months every year, as the Grand Duke had
wished, as his old musical friends had hoped, as he him-
self had recognized the need of doing. It was because
Rome was hardly favorable to the music of the future.
Not even to music itself. And Liszt felt that for serv-
ing God and his soul the most beautiful Roman retreat,
were it even the Villa d'Este, was not equal to ten feet
cut from the musician's earth, the pupils to whom he
could give his faith, and, here and there, a good orches-
tra to govern for the glory of God.

Not that at Rome he was totally deprived of these
blessings, but that they did not exist there in a way
that was entirely after his own heart. All this public
of old prelates, learned folk, persons who had retired
from the world, peaceful and resigned beings who came
to have their souls soothed by the indulgent sun of
Saint Peter, no longer harmonized as it had once done
with the vigor of his fifty-eight years. Now that his
religious hunger had received its first appeasement, he
felt the need of breathing a livelier air, reopening a
window on his own century. The apartment in which
the good Carolyne was writing the eight volumes of

247

248 FRANZ LISZT

her Petits entretiens a Vusage des femmes du grand
monde, her Chapelle Sixtine, her Eglise attaquee, her
Simpliclte des colombes, seemed rather musty. Franz
found himself more the oblate than the novice, more
than the hermit especially, since he had the soothing
certitude that whenever he wished he could find again
his mystic refuges.

So he accepted the offer of Karl Alexander and re-
turned to Weimar at the beginning of the year 1869
to make a long visit there. The Altenburg was oc-
cupied. In exchange Liszt received from the Grand
Duke a little house that suited him very well. This
was the Hofgartnerei, the dwelling of the head-gar-
dener of the court, put in order and furnished for the
musician. A dove-cot buried in the verdure of the park.
A vestibule, a kitchen and a room for his servant Paul-
ine on the ground-floor. Upstairs, three apartments :
a music-room, the bedroom and a little dining-room.
The rugs were there, and the Algerian hangings, the
grand and the small piano, even many of his familiar
objects, the engravings, the busts and the swords of
honor. The princesses themselves had arranged every-
thing. Above his bed Franz hung a sacred image and
the old ikon of Saint Francis de Paul. On his table,
beside the window, he set the little yellow daguerreo-
type in its gilded paper frame representing Carolyne
at twenty-seven. He was very much at home in the
midst of this "Wagnerian luxury." And at once a
new life began, his second Weimarian incarnation.

Pupils flocked about him, twenty during the first
season, men and women. As in the old days, he re-
served the mornings for his personal work, rising at

FRANZ LISZT 249

six and going to mass at eight. In the afternoon he
gave his lessons, generally to several of his assembled
pupils, sometimes all at once, making one or another
play according to his impulse of the moment. The
lessons in no way resembled those of the days of
Geneva and Paris. How afraid these ladies and
gentlemen were when the clear eye of the great Liszt
lighted on them and he invited them to show their
little knowledge ! After amusing himself with the blun-
ders of one of them, after becoming purple with rage
at the neat and properly "Conservatory" playing of an-
other, he himself interpreted the accused passages.
They listened to him with something more than defer-
ence, this man who had known Schumann, Chopin and
Beethoven, playing with them, before them, and whom
they had admired. Every Sunday, from half past
eleven to one, Liszt held an official reception. The
Grand Duke was never absent on these mornings when
a little group of artists and intimates made up the
essential part of the public. Ladies appeared there
in numbers and continued to seek the attentions of the
master, as had been the rule for forty years. As a gen-
eral thing, they played chamber music, new composi-
tions, and Liszt came and went, criticized, commented
and ended by sitting down at the piano himself.

He gave all his lessons gratis. He became attached
to many of his pupils, remained in correspondence with
them, interested himself in their careers. This resulted
in some jealousies, on the feminine side especially.
Liszt said : "They all love themselves in me" ; but he
blessed them in secret for nourishing that perpetual
of love without which his genius would have been

250 FRANZ LISZT

instantly frozen. He had much more of a passion for
being loved than for being admired, for it was love
which they honored through him and love is the only
approach to art and to God. When Carolyne estab-
lished herself in Rome, Liszt had not understood at
first that she was leaving this world of music forever
to shut herself up in a purgatory of spiritual delights
and contritions. He had tried to follow her there,
endeavored to think with her that art was not a religion
apart but the formal incarnation of the true, Catholic,
Apostolic, and Roman religion. His wings had begun
to grow. But to the reading of the breviary had soon
been added the Technical Exercises, a few Lieder, the
Funeral Triumph of Tasso, then a homesickness for the
music of Wagner. And when the "Good Ecclesiastes,"
as he nicknamed the Princess, had begun her immense
work (which was to comprise twenty-four volumes) on
the Inner Causes of the External Weakness of the
Church, the abbe, without thinking of it, found himself
an artist again.

Artist and man. A man almost old, crowned with
very beautiful white hair, with a body that was slightly
bent, but the whole individual still supernatural. When
they approached him, women always blushed under that
glance of his, so full of heaven and caresses.

This same autumn, at Rome, a new pupil, the
Countess Janina, fell madly in love with him. A som-
bre creature, of Cossack origin, she prowled day and
night about the beloved master, played his music at
concerts and copied his manuscripts with a true talent
for calligraphy. Liszt prayed to his patron saint to
come to his aid, for she was very ardent, this Olga

FRANZ LISZT 251

Janina. He fled from Rome to Tivoli, where Cardinal
Hohenlohe kept for him all the year round an apart-
ment in the Villa d'Este. The Countess succeeded in
breaking her way in and managed to appear one fine
morning dressed as a man, her arms filled with flowers.
Liszt was working at his Cantata for the Centenary of
Beethoven and kept within reach of his hand the
Christian Perfection, a very recent work of Carolyne's.
But this time the beautiful gardener of love got the
better of all the talismans.

Three months later, Liszt liberated himself by re-
turning to Weimar. His pupils hastily assembled and
he resumed his life as the oracle and great master of
music for all southern Germany. This year 1870 was
going to be remembered because of a new music-festival
for which Liszt had been asked to draw up the pro-
gramme. Between June 15 and July 6, the Weimar
theatre was to present Tannhauser, Lohengrin, the
Fliegende Hollander, the Meistersdnger and even Tris-
tan und Isolde. Liszt's Cantata was to figure also,
along with the works of Raff, Beethoven and others.
The Emperor of Russia had arranged to come, as
had also several Grand Dukes and the Prussian princes,
Kaulbach, Turgenev, Pauline Viardot, Rubinstein.
Everything gravitated about Liszt, who directed the
musical as well as the literary part of these festivals.
Everyone came to him. His energy was unweariable,
his amiability inexhaustible. On the whole, he ruled
public opinion at Weimar much better now that he was
only a passing guest. "All enmities die in the presence
of the great Liszt, who has never appeared greater and
better," Mme. de Moukhanov-Kalergis wrote to her

252 FRANZ LISZT

daughter. "Into every detail he carries his infinite
grace, his delicate attentiveness to each and everyone,
amiable to the humblest, distributing praise and advice,
on his feet from seven o'clock in the morning, playing,
directing, talking the whole day, and this on the eve
of his sixtieth year. . . . He doubles the strength of
all those who come near him and never loses his own."
And, after the Wagner festival had begun: "One is
intoxicated with music and the ideal," she wrote, still
vibrant, and this "with a warmth of enthusiasm, a
unanimity of admiration that one encounters nowhere
else.'' No one read the newspapers any longer. There
was a general stupefaction when the war broke out.
Then a general flight. They were mad, said the White
Fairy, these people who, over wretched questions of
national vanity, trampled under foot "the harvest of
heaven and that of genius."

Liszt had just left for Munich where were given
in the absence of the author the first performances
of Die Walkiire. His perplexity was extreme. The
son of the humble steward of Raiding was now an
illustrious European, belonging to four countries, who,
in half a century, had put down roots in Paris, in Wei-
mar, in Budapest and in Rome. He found himself with
a son-in-law Prime Minister of the liberal empire which
he admired so much, and a daughter who, for eight
days, had been the wife of one of the new heroes of
German nationalism ! For he had just learned from
the newspapers of the marriage of Cosima and Wag-
net, celebrated at Lucerne. Through the newspapers,
since, for a year, Cosima had ceased to write to him.

FRANZ LISZT 253

This little piece of news of the artistic world was
mingled with accounts of German victories.

Taking refuge with his friend Augusz, in Hungary,
he wrote to Carolyne: "If the empire falls, I shall feel
personally a great sorrow." And on September 4:
" After the terrifying blow of the surrender of the
French army and the emperor, we must renounce for
a long time the hopes of which your letter spoke.
Providence has pronounced its decree against the sover-
eign whom I admired as the most able and the best
personage of our epoch." Following the prediction of
Voltaire, the age of the Prussians seemed thus to have
come. What was going to happen now? "No doubt
from this catastrophe also some great idea will emerge
and we shall witness the appearance of some unimag-
ined regulating principle for the modern States; but
the philosophy of history is a science that is more than
ever conjectural today and altogether enveloped in
terror." Liszt was unable and did not wish to join
any battalion but that off the musicians. "Politics is
the science of expediencies and art of purpose. Herr
von Bismarck evidently knows better than the others
what he intends to do, so far as the present is con-
cerned I I cannot follow him into these high regions
and shall apply myself with all my heart to Saint
Stanislas. Let us pray that the reign of God may

arrive."

Saint Stanislas was a new oratorio on a legendary
Polish text adapted by the Princess. Liszt worked
on it with little pleasure. The Cossack Countess had
confused his religious inspiration a little. Then every-
where in Hungary they were tormenting him to settle

254 FRANZ LISZT

at Pest, where he was to be appointed director of a
new and important academy of music. He allowed a
promise to be wrung from him and returned to Weimar
in the spring of 1871, without having seen Rome or
the Princess again. In her presence he would no doubt
have abandoned the project of his fellow-countrymen
at Pest, since in reality this directorship, more honor-
ary than effective, seemed to him a handsome and
pleasant sinecure. It coincided, in other respects, with
that pigeon-hole phase which had just seized upon him
again. Not until he had signed his contract did he
return to Santa Francesca Romana.

Carolyne was still living in the Via del Babuino,
immured, happy, busily writing. Franz plunged once
more into his beatitudes and his adoration for the great
Poor Man of God, thanks to whose protection he
hoped to fight and conquer his old enemy, not the little
devil of mundane things but "the demon of excitements
and extreme emotions." But it was this demon exactly
that was about to play him two tricks. And first, a
vengeance. From New York there dropped down a
cable message from the Countess Janina : "I am setting
out this week to pay you for your letter." The letter
was one in which Liszt, pursued by the correspondence
of this jealous creature, had rather rudely dismissed
her. When she arrived in Rome, Franz had left for
Pest. She followed him there and ostentatiously trum-
peted her plan to kill Liszt and then kill herself. She
stormed her way into his bedroom and placed on the
table her revolver and several vials of poison, orna-
ments that she had exhibited twice already the preced-
ing winter. The artist calmly said to her :

FRANZ LISZT 255

"What you intend to do is evil. I urge you to give
it up, but I shall not prevent you from doing it."

She indulged her hysterics while Liszt put the lady's
trinkets in a place of safety. Baron Augusz and other
friends dropped in opportunely, appeased this pretty
fury and put her on the train for Paris. As she still
had many manuscripts which the composer had en-
trusted to her talent for calligraphy, she burned them.
Then she wrote a virulent book, the Souvenirs of a
Cossack, which she followed up with the Memoirs of
a Pianist. But Liszt had been immune for twenty
years against this kind of poison.

Nevertheless, "the demon of extreme emotions" still
held in reserve an even more harrowing experience:
the Baroness Meyendorff, nee Princess Gortschakoff,
with the Christian name of Olga, just like the Countess
Janina. Liszt had known her for seven years, ever
since he had settled in Rome, where Meyendorff had
a post in the Russian legation. The Baroness was a
woman of high intelligence, very slender, usually
dressed in black. Glacial with those to whom she was
indifferent, she left upon those who she found sym-
pathetic a very different impression. She was one of
those women for whom sympathy, friendship, are im-
possible sentiments because they understand nothing
but passion. With all this went an extremely de-
veloped culture and a firm and direct, even somewhat
authoritative, character; and she was an original and
exceptionally gifted pianist.

From the moment she saw Liszt she avoided him,
aware of the danger into which such a man might draw
her. And for years this silent woman never allowed

256 FRANZ LISZT

anything to appear. But in 1867 her husband was ap-
pointed Russian minister at Weimar where, fifteen
months later, Liszt saw her again. No doubt she
thought that here the struggle would very quickly be-
come useless, and henceforth, with the wholeness of
character that threw her altogether against or toward
her desires, she sought the man whom she had fled.
Franz resisted her. He believed he was no longer
young enough to bear the expense of this outlay. And
then there were the cassock, Carolyne, work. . . ,
But the Black Cat, as she was called, possessed the
power of cats, all the subtleties of the intelligence and
an unbreakable will. She excited the composer's power
of work; she renewed, in her youth, her beauty, the
enthusiasms with which Carolyne had once supplied
him. He inhaled in her presence the last temptation
of the secret world of pleasures.

So Liszt yielded, not to an ultimate weakness, but to
this supreme force. He stood erect again in all his
stature as an artist. Once more he appeared most
laborious, most inspired. Mme. de Moukhanov,
watching him play his Requiem at the organ, regretted
with the Grand Duke that there was no painter to
capture to the life the splendor of his genius. She wrote
to. him : "He has found his supreme and complete ex-
pression in the music of the Church, where he will never
be surpassed, where he exhausts without ever exhaust-
ing himself all the riches of form and metaphysics.
He gives himself entirely in his works, as in his playing.
What makes the magic of this unique playing, the
fascination, the complicated enchantment of his nature,
is precisely what wounds some of the listeners who hear

FRANZ LISZT 257

his religious compositions. They find in them too much
mystical piety, too much of a palpable abandon, too
many genuflections, if I may so express myself and
they are shocked too by the theatrical pomp. Very
few have the stuff in them to identify themselves with
the drama of a soul that reveals itself to God, cries
and weeps, wishes to take heaven by violence the
struggle of a Pascal. That is what I adore in the music
of Liszt : it is human, of all times, it is each of us, and,
above everything, style. Why has he accompanied his
Three Magi with a triumphal march? It is out of
respect for the grandeurs of the world, which he thinks
should humiliate themselves with splendor. There is
a chapter in Saint Thomas Aquinas 'On Magnificence'
to justify him."

There, expressed with great intelligence, is an ap-
preciation to contrast with those of Schumann and
Chopin, noted down thirty years earlier. He was the
same man, but the faults had been consumed and the
virtues (in the sense of courage) deepened. The soul
had assumed all its weight, its utterance had become
clear. Satanic doubt and divine certitude occupy the
two poles from which this agitated intelligence draws
its electricity. Luminous "ninths," phosphorescent
"elevenths," a persistent polyphonic chromatism, such
are the distinctive signs of his music, with certain pas-
sive suavities that spring from the liturgical quietude.
This elderly man, still in the fullness of youth, invented
the astonishing series of major harmonies founded on
the successive notes of the harmony of the diminished
seventh which was to become a determining factor in
Wagnerian and modern harmony.

258 FRANZ LISZT

When Mme. de Meyendorff lost her husband in
1871, she came to live openly near Liszt at Weimar.
Thenceforward this magnificent man thus had two
cities and two friends. Even three cities, for one must
add Pest, where, after 1872, he spent two or three
months every year as director of the new Conserva-
tory This led to the first long dissension between him-
self and Carolyne. She felt that not the man alone but
the artist also was escaping her. Her long, her care-
ful influence, extended to so many details of the spirit
after all those of everyday comfort, was evaporating
through distance. She was no longer the only one.
She knew it; it broke her heart; but she gave up the
unequal struggle. She delegated her friends to watch
over the beloved and even to spy on him. The out-
lets of the tomb in which she dwelt were closed. It was
by letters alone that she preserved contact with the
world and with Liszt. Poor letters to which he never
replied either very quickly or very well. Even when
he returned to Rome, letters too often took the place
of visits. But when he went to see her, the recluse
scattered roses over her carpets. He perceived this
only to smile, pick one up, nibble at it and tear it to
pieces, then return to the Villa d'Este. "The woman
who does not follow the ordinary path of happiness,"
she repeated to herself, "should devote herself to other
activities. Everyone seeks his way slowly, but finds
it always If she does not give herself to art, to an
intellectual occupation, she must find something else."
She had found her own in renunciation and theology.
She could truly say: "I am more harmonious every
year."

FRANZ LISZT 259

In the midst of this general ageing of things came
deaths. D'Ortigue died in 1866, a little before the
last visit of Liszt to Paris. Ingres, the year after.
Rossini, in 1868; Berlioz, in 1869; Caroline d'Arti-
gaux, in 1872, that Caroline, "ripened for heaven,"
whom Liszt had so piously adored. The kingdom of
hearts was being quietly depopulated and the whole
earth was assuming another face.

While these gaps were being hollowed out, Franz
bent his ear towards Bayreuth, a little town in Bavaria.
He had read many things in the newspapers. Billow
said that the temple of which Liszt had been the first
to dream was really going to rise. But since the silence
had fallen between himself and the Wagners, this nos-
talgia, this music, this love, had ceased to be anything
but sorrow.

The first stone of the theatre of Bayreuth was laid
on May 22, 1872, on the birthday of the master.
Franz was not present. He had waited till the last
hour for an invitation that did not come. He dele-
gated in his place an old friend, Fraulein von Schorn,
and went with her to the station. It was on the morn-
ing of Pentecost. Liszt had put on his cassock. He
plucked a bough of an elder tree and handed it to the
messenger as a branch of peace. When the train
moved out, he remained for a long time following it
with his eyes, making signs with his hand. Then he
opened his breviary and walked away, his white head
bowed before him.

Returning home, he at last found the letter for
which he had so painfully hoped. But there was no
longer time now.

260 FRANZ LISZT

"Cosima insists that you will not come, even if I
invite you. So we must endure this too, we who have
already endured so much ! Yet I am not willing not to
invite you. And you know what it means if I say to
you, Come. You entered my life as the greatest man
to whom I have ever addressed words of friendship.
You separated yourself from me, perhaps because you
have less confidence in me than I have in you. In
your place, the thing most intimately your own, your-
self born a second time has come to satisfy my ardent
desire to have you entirely mine. So you live in full
beauty before me and in me. We are united above the
tombs. You were the first one who, by his love, en-
nobled me. I yield now to a second and higher exist-
ence through her to whom I am married, and I can
accomplish what I could not have accomplished alone.
Thus you have become everything for me, while, for
you, I remain so unimportant. What immense ad-
vantages have you not given me over you ! And if I
say, Come, I mean by this, Come home, for it is
yourself you will find here. May you be blessed and
beloved, whatever your decision may be."

"Dear and glorious friend," Liszt replied, "I do not
know how to reply by words to your letter, which has
profoundly shaken me. But I ardently hope that the
shadows and the circumstances which have held me at
a distance will disappear and that we may soon see each
other. Then you will understand that my soul remains
inseparable from yours, revivified in your second and
higher existence in which you are accomplishing what
you could not have accomplished alone. I recognize

FRANZ LISZT 261

there the grace of heaven. The blessing of God be
with you both, together with all my love."

Almost another half-year rolled by before he set out
for Bayreuth. He embraced Wagner, his daughter,
the five children. The Festspielhaus was already rising
from the earth. He also saw the foundations of the
beautiful villa which the Glorious One was having
built for himself. Liszt, who was almost poor now,
rejoiced that fortune had at last been merciful to his
friend. Wagner read him the first draught of Parsifal,
which overwhelmed the abbe. As for Cosima, "she
surpasses herself," he said. "Let others judge and
condemn her; for me she remains a soul worthy of the
gran perdono of Saint Francis and admirably my
daughter."

Admirably my daughter. . . . There is one of
Liszt's aptest phrases.

XXV

BUT the reconciliation with Bayreuth supremely dis-
pleased the Princess. In it she saw two signs: that
Liszt had yielded to profane music and that her own
reign was definitely over. Liszt knew this very well
too, but he strove to preserve for his friend his most
beautiful inner sonorities. "On two points, now major
for me, our opinions differ: Weimar and Bayreuth.
But I do not at all despair of a solution of these dis-
sonances. . . . Unhappily, I am unable to write to
you any more without reflection. I make it inwardly,
like Saint Francis Xavier, who wrote to Saint Ignatius
only on his knees/' So they had reached the point
where they could only converse like two saints I And
not to run the risk of spoiling this, Franz spent a whole
winter away from Rome. Explanations of the inexpli-
cable or the too explicable could only lead to new mis-
understandings or to those compromises that are very
saddening to the life of the heart. Carolyne did not dis-
arm. It was not with Weimar and Bayreuth alone that
she reproached him now, but his pupils, his feminine
pupils especially, and even his need of orchestral music.
Truly, absence had become a necessity.

Liszt therefore passed the entire winter at Budapest.
For the benefit of the composer, Robert Franz, he gave
a piano recital there, the first in twenty years. His
excuse for this derogation from his principles was that
it was a matter of charity. Then, in the spring, he

262

FRANZ LISZT 263

applied himself to his oratorio, The Christ, which was
presented at Weimar. It was an event at the little
court, and people flocked in from all the surrounding
towns. The premiere was given in the Protestant
church, for it was very large, and the abbe himself took
the baton. The princes, his old friends, the Wagners,
his pupils, crowded the immense auditorium, all save
Carolyne, who wrote from her Roman tomb: "The
Christ, ah, that is the glorious peace of my heart. For
me it is a work of which the ages have not seen the
like. Its hour has not struck," That was true. And
moreover, it was badly executed, so that all its weak-
nesses were emphasized. But criticism no longer
reached the composer who thought especially of the
edifying value of his work: "I have composed The
Christ as he was taught me by the priest of my village."
So long as it fortified in their faith a few simple hearts,
was not his end attained?

This summer of 1873 Li gzt returned to Bayreuth
which he formed the habit of visiting henceforth every
year. The soil of his ideal. If Wagner was its Parsi-
fal with the divine lance, Liszt was its old King Titurel,
whose faith had dreamed this castle dedicated to the
Holy Grail of music. He found in himself once more
a soul flowing with joy within the walls that rose at the
two extremities of the town, at Wahnfried (peace of
the imagination, repose of the spirit), the beautiful
dwelling, in the Roman style, of the Wagners, and
above, on the sacred hill, at the foot of the temple.
He admired also the double tomb which Richard and
Cosima had already caused to be dug in the garden
so that they should remain united, and he drew from

264 FRANZ LISZT

It, in his customary way, a lesson in humility. It was
in the habit of the third order of Saint Francis that
he wished to be buried, without pomp, without honors.
The grander everything he had wished to be grand
grew about him, the more he made himself small. "It
must increase and I must diminish." So he grew into
the habit of singing inwardly at intervals some verse of
the Old or the New Testament. And the demon was
exorcised : the other ardors grew calm, or at least were
purified.

He returned to Rome in the peace of his body to find
a Carolyne more broken but more understanding:
"Your soul is too tender," she said, "too artistic, too
sentimental to exist without feminine society. You
need to have women about you, and women of every
kind, as an orchestra demands different instruments,
varied tonalities. Unfortunately, there are few women
who are what they should be: good and sincere, re-
sponding to your intelligence without placing a guilty
hand on the chords which, if they reply, produce a
melancholy sound. I am often very sad when I think
how you will always be misunderstood. Perhaps in the
future your triumphs will seem to have been bacchanals,
for some bacchantes have mingled in them. And yet
I know that you have never called them. So far as
they have not made you leave your ideal sphere, you
have found yourself happy there."

Happy! Childhood has more taste for this word
than old age, which has less time to think of it. When
the hour grows late, one makes haste. His vast career
seemed to Liszt to be behind the schedule that he had
planned. Henceforth, the glory of God must be sung

FRANZ LISZT 265

by his servitor on all the roads of Europe, as in the
old days. A three weeks' stay in Rome was enough.
He set out again for Pest where his admirers were
gathered to celebrate his jubilee.

For it was actually fifty years since he had given his
first concert at Vienna and Beethoven had embraced
him. Just as at the time of his former triumph, Liszt
was received at the frontier by a deputation, conducted
in great pomp to the capital and feted for three days
with banquets and public rejoicings. The Cantata per-
formed by the "Liszt Society," the presentation of a
golden laurel crown, the founding of a Liszt Fund
that would serve to pay for the instruction of three
musical students during a whole year, a solemn produc-
tion of The Christ, telegrams from the four corners of
the earth, decorations, a ball. At his right and left
were seated his two friends, one fair, the other dark,
the Black Cat and the White Fairy. Liszt rose after
the official speeches and, as his custom was, replied in
French: "I thank God for having granted me r a pious
childhood. The same religious sentiments animate my
compositions, from the Mass of Gran to the work that
you heard yesterday/' And, shortly afterward, he
wrote to the Princess: "Dear Saint Carolyne, believe
me when I say that I am not pursuing ribbons, or pro-
ductions of my works, or praise, or distinctions, or
newspaper articles in whatever land I happen to be
visiting. My sole ambition as a musician has been and
will be to cast my javelin into the indefinite spaces of
the future, as we said once in the journal of Brendel."
And to complete the tour of his fiftieth musical anni-
versary, he went to play at Vienna, Presbourg, and

266 FRANZ LISZT

even OEdenburg, that little town where Papa Liszt had
been so proud of his mosquito of a son.

A sudden fatigue brought him back to the Villa
d'Este, and, filled with ideas, he set to work again
""composing. It was the first time in a long while that
he had enjoyed with so much vigor the company of
his books, his music paper and the bells of the
monastery. In a few months he wrote his Legend
of Saint Cecilia, The Bells of Strasbourg, inter-
rupting himself only on Sundays to go and
see Carolyne. A period of double happiness for the
recluse, who exulted in her power to add to her faith
in God her faith in the genius of the beloved one.
"People do not understand him yet much less than
they do Wagner for the latter, at the present time,
represents a reaction. But Liszt has thrown his lance
much further into the future. Several generations will
pass before he is entirely understood. Since it has been
given to me to understand him, I must, in the name of
art, do everything to see that he gives everything that
he can give." Such was the unvarying Credo this
jealous, bothersome, sublime creature recited every day.
But nothing annoys a man like a love of this kind.
Franz suffered from it without ever allowing this suffer-
ing to be seen and sought consolation in his work.
Excelsior is of this date, a work from which Wagner
was to borrow a famous harmony in his Parsifal.

All this was written at Tivoli, the Villa d'Este.
The signor commendatore occupied there a little apart-
ment of four rooms opening on the hanging terraces
from which the view stretched beyond the Roman cam-
pagna to the horizon of Saint Peter's. In the car-

FRANZ LISZT 267

dinal's gardens and among the cool alleys of the town,
a multitude of children ran to kiss the hands and the
cassock of the artist. Liszt flung about handfuls of
money which his servant got ready every day for this
purpose. He amused himself with this joyous poverty
in the midst of which his Franciscan soul breathed at
its ease. The playing fountains, the cascades, the
cypresses in the park filled him with a light, gushing
music. These were months full of serenity.

But a great sorrow befell him at the end of May,
1874, the death of his friend Marie de Moukhanov,
who had been ill for a long time. In the last letter she
had written him, she said: "To live in your memory is
a mode of existence that gives one some peace." Per-
haps this seeker of happiness had really loved no one
but Liszt. He piously kept her letters, in which there
was revealed a chaste tenderness they were both care-
ful to guard from the exaggerations of passion. He
reread one of them. It was impregnated with those
exquisite sentiments which had drawn him to her so
many years before : "I shall sum up in a single word
of thanks many very old, very young, passionately ad-
miring and always humble sentiments that one must
cherish, combat and keep to oneself." He gave free
course to his tears. Then he sat down at the piano,
for this was always his first movement in moments of
great grief as of great joy, and improvised his Elegy
in Memory of Mme. Marie Moukhanov, nee Countess
Nesselrode.

In the following spring he set out again for Pest
where an interesting concert, a Wagner-Liszt concert,
was being given. The two composers mounted the

268 FRANZ LISZT

platform together. Wagner conducted fragments of
the Ring, the receipts being destined for the theatre of
Bayreuth. His music was now that which everybody
wanted to hear and no one disputed any more. When
Liszt's turn came, he approached the piano, stooping,
with an air of fatigue, to play a Concerto of Beethoven.
At first he seemed scarcely to touch the keys, and
people asked themselves if this great old man had not
exhausted his illustrious powers. But the sound rose,
expanded and soon filled the hall with such a plenitude
of harmony, such a miraculous sweetness of expression,
that, according to the opinion of the most competent
judges, the Liszt of thirty years earlier had not at-
tained such a degree of perfection.

He then set out for Munich, Hanover, the Castle
of Loo (where he was the guest of the King of Hol-
land) , to return at last to Weimar. He was possessed
by one idea, that of organizing a solemn ceremony in
memory of Marie de Moukhanov. The Grand Duke
gladly lent himself to this, and Liszt took charge of
everything. The date was fixed for June lyth, by way
of signifying the "end of the year." In the hall of the
Templar's House, on the edge of the Grand Ducal
park, a catafalque of verdure was arranged, on the top
of which, on a mountain of flowers, was placed the
portrait of the White Fairy painted by Lenbach. A
hundred and fifty guests were gathered there, among
them the King and Queen of Wiirttemberg, the Queen
of Holland and Cosima Wagner, dressed in mourning.
The Abbe Liszt served this musical mass, the ritual of
which consisted of five parts, all of his own composi-
tion: his Requiem t for four men's voices, the Hymn

FRANZ LISZT 269

of the Child on His Awakening, for three women's
voices, the Legend of Saint Cecilia and finally the
Elegy. It all breathed the memory of this romantic
pilgrim, the dazzling pupil of Chopin, the sister in the
ideal of the great abbe who, describing to a friend these
spiritual obsequies, said: "There was in her an inde-
scribable note of mystery the harmony of which re-
sounded only in heaven."

Still another bereavement overtook him a year later,
when he had just reached Pest. Running through the
newspapers, his eye was caught by a well-known name,
that of Daniel Stern, Marie d'Agoult, the mother of
his children. Stupefied at first, he looked into himself
and found that he felt nothing. Ah, that pain had
been worn out. When one has wept over a person in
his lifetime, can one still weep after his death? "//
mondo va da se one exists in it, one keeps busy, one
grieves, torments oneself, becomes disillusioned, thinks
better of it, and dies as best one can ! The most desir-
able of the sacraments to receive seems to me that of
Extreme Unction." While he was thinking this, a
letter was put into his hands from his son-in-law Olli-
vier. It contained, along with some political notes, only
four lines on the event. But it enclosed a page from
Ronchaud: "Mme. d'Agoult's illness was very brief
and we did not realize the danger until the eve of her
death. She fell ill on Tuesday afternoon, and on Sun-
day at noon everything was over. She died of an
inflammation of the lungs which came on during a walk :
she suffered a great deal the first days, but the last
days were calmer. The funeral took place yesterday
morning. The prayers were said after the Protestant

270 FRANZ LISZT

rite, in the mortuary chapel, from which the coffin
was carried to Pere-Lachaise, where it lay in state in
a provisional vault. Two discourses were pronounced,
full of eloquent feeling, and deeply touching to those
who were present, one at the house, the other at the
cemetery, by the Pastor Fontanes, one of the eminent
members of the liberal Protestant church chosen by
Mme. d'AgouIt herself."

A very few months after Marie it was George
Sand's turn. With these old ladies Franz's whole
youth was going. Who remained now from the time
when they left Nohant in the post-chaise to visit
Lamartine in the chateau of Saint-Point? He looked
about him and found no one but himself, the inde-
fatigable rover of the great highways who still received
every week the mail of a young man. But love letters
are no consolation for old age, however much of a
security they may be against ennui. Now and then,
however, one of the young women who admired him
stirred his enthusiasm sufficiently to offer him still a
few moments of illusion.

This year 1876 was the year of Bayreuth, the year
of the "great miracle of German art" of which for
thirty years Liszt had been the prophet. The Fest-
spielhaus was opening its doors for the first time to an
audience of kings, disciples and the curious who were
flocking there from every corner of the globe. The
old master Liszt set out at the head of the procession
of pilgrims. He had scarcely reached the holy spot
when he wrote to Carolyne : "No more doubt, no more
obstacles. The immense genius of Wagner has sur-
mounted everything. His work, the Nibelungenring,

FRANZ LISZT 271

shines over the world. The blind cannot obstruct the
light nor the deaf the music." And to the Grand Duke
at Weimar: "What has been accomplished here is al-
most a miracle. Your Royal Highness will see it is
so, and I shall always regret that Weimar, in the name
of its glorious antecedents, has not had all the glory
that will come from it."

The town was dressed in flags. The strange Lud-
wig II drove through it in a closed carriage and has-
tened to the theatre where, alone in his box, he watched
the final rehearsals. The Emperor was expected with
his daughter and his son-in-law. The Emperor of
Russia and his cousin of Mecklenburg were staying
. with the Duke of Wiirttemberg. The hotels were
crammed with people; princes and kapellmeisters,
strangers and musicians of all degrees of greatness,
were quartered on the inhabitants. Seated beside the
master, in his carriage, young Professor Nietzsche, with
his grave eye and his knitted brows, was disclosing
heaven knows what frightening thought. He had al-
ready written of his great friend that he was a sim-
plifier of the world, without clearly suspecting as yet
that a war of the spirit was going to separate them
forever. He was living the last hours of a dream
which he was going to remember many years later and
of which he was to say: "I loved Wagner and, except
for him, no one. He was a man after my heart."

On August 13, the curtain rose on the Rheingold;
the three days following, on Die Walkure, Siegfried
and Gotterdammerung. Wagner at last saw the real-
ization of the ambition of his whole life in this aesthetic
lesson which extended from the poem to the stage-

272 FRANZ LISZT

setting, from the music to the philosophy. But he left
it to his wife to enjoy the glory at her receptions at
Wahnfried. As for himself, almost exhausted by the
effort, he shut himself up in the company of the mad
King and his old friend Liszt. In his private talks
with them, the exile of Zurich, the man who had
starved in Paris, felt that he had broken a despair that
he had borne for forty years. One might say that he
had paid for this triumphal dawn with the gift of his
life. "Let not an older man think of himself," he
exclaimed at this time, "but let him love the younger
through the love of what he can bequeath him. . . ."
This explains why his heritage is so charged with emo-
tion. But Wagner was aware that he could not allow
his bequest to be divided without paying the oldest of
his debts. He waited to do this in public, at the ban-
quet that followed the last performance.

Having risen to deliver his discourse before seven
hundred guests, he ended with these words : "There is
the man who believed in me first of all, when no one
as yet knew anything about me, the one without whom
you might never have heard one note of my music, my
very dear friend Franz Liszt."

XXVI

ONE must always excuse an unskilful heart and make
allowances for suffering. The indulgence of some will
go to Liszt, that of others to the Princess. The fact
is that Bayreuth resulted in a serious dispute between
this pair of old lovers. One can guess what Carolyne's
reproaches were. She was indignant that her great
man should consent to play the role of a "supernumer-
ary." Franz replied simply: "No one plays any role
here. One creates art and plays that." And a little
while after: "In all humility, I do not think I deserve
the letter I received from you today. God knows that
to lighten your sorrows was my sole task for many
years. I have succeeded very badly, it seems. For my
part, I only wish to remember the hours when we have
wept and prayed together, with one heart. After your
letter of today, I give up the idea of returning to
Rome."

He kept his word. Rome did not see him this
year. Absence, he thought, would cure him and, above
all, cure the Princess, and he patiently awaited the day
when their sad colloquies would cease. It was in good
faith that he invoked his patron saint, Francis de Paul,
that man of obscure origin who had founded the order
of Minims. He fasted, mortified himself, never wrote
out his sermons and scarcely thought of literature.
On the contrary, "your patron, Saint Charles Bor-
romeo, of an illustrious family, was a cardinal very

373

274 FRANZ LISZT

early and thus participated in the government of the
Church. He even interested himself in music and pa-
tronized the reform permitted at that time in the Sis-
tine Chapel in favor of Palestrina. While fasting and
mortifying himself, like Saint Francis de Paul, and tak-
ing Humllitas for his device, he remained Archbishop
of Milan and porporato. Our two patrons explain
very well our differences of opinion. You soar aloft
and I paddle about below. I attach myself to the
Minims, and you are in sympathy with the great, who
must reign and govern. Why dispute? You must
necessarily be right." This paraphrase of a celebrated
passage from Pascal struck the unhappy woman to the
heart. But an artist, tried beyond endurance, becomes
ferocious.

Liszt made his expiation in other ways. For in-
stance, in the case of Billow's sudden dislike of him:
Billow, blasting what he had adored, was now repudiat-
ing the work of his old master and extolling that of
Brahms. It was in circumstances of this kind that
Liszt showed his greatness. He went to see Billow
who, utterly worn out by his excessive labors, had been
obliged to take a long rest in a sanitarium on the banks
of the Rhine. His only vengeance was to pardon him.
"He suffers more morally than physically. His innate
heroism remains and will render him victorious, I hope,
over the double illness that crushes him." This was in
a most beautiful Christian spirit, and one could not but
subscribe to the judgment expressed by Liszt upon him-
self when he wrote at this same period: "It is twelve
years since I entered the Vatican as an associate of
Mgr. Hohenlohe. The sentiments that led me there

FRANZ LISZT 275

have not deserted me; they date from my years of
childhood and my first communion in a little village
church. I dare to say that nothing factitious or vain
has ever debased them, and I hope that the grace of
God will preserve them to me till my last hour. To
give them a homogeneous, harmonious, complete form,
in the practice of life and in that of my profession as
an artist, has been and remains the chief desire of my
heart."

Liszt returned to Rome, therefore, in the summer
of 1877 and established himself once more at Tivoli.
He passed whole days under the cypresses and com-
posed the famous piece which he dedicated to them.
Michael Angelo was his guide, but he wished to ex-
press himself here "by a quasi-amorous melody."
Ruysbroek the Admirable, discovered, thanks to Ernest
Hello, was his book of inspiration : for a whole season
he talked about it. This great childlike heart was filled
with the sentiment of his own unworthiness, and from
this time he preferred to sign his messages to Carloyne
with the name of Dimas, which tradition attributed to
the good thief. If he still travelled a good deal, if he
wandered every year between Pest, Weimar, Bayreuth
and Paris, Rome had nevertheless become his haven of
study and serenity. His pride was truly made up, as he
said, of sincere modesty; and when they performed
again his Mass of Gran at Saint-Eustache and the re-
ceipts amounted to 150,000 francs, when Pasdeloup
said to him, "Your Credo, Monsieur 1'Abbe, is a sure
success at popular concerts," it no longer even touched
his vanity. His spirit had become so purely that of the
gospel that he bore the cavillings of Carolyne as a

276 FRANZ LISZT

necessary cross. What she suffered and caused him to
suffer through jealousy was only that jealousy of God
which Saint Paul speaks in his Epistle to the Corin-
thians. And yet she was sometimes insupportable. In
a moment of revolt, Franz could not restrain himself
from crying out : "You no longer take any account of
the logical honor of my life. When I am dead, you
will realize that my soul was and always remained pro-
foundly attached to yours." At Christmas, 1878, at
the midnight mass, he prayed for her with all his heart
and asked God to render him worthy of the "sense of
the supernatural" in which he felt himself enveloped.

He composed his Via Crucis and his Seven Sacra-
ments. His Mephisto-waltz also. He took a deep
interest in the new Russian music of Rimski-Korsakov,
Balakireff, Borodin, Cesar Cui and Anatole Liadov,
At a time when the elegant society of Saint Petersburg
scarcely knew the names of these gentlemen, Liszt, with
that rare eye which he always possessed, had already
discerned their importance. "The five musicians I have
just named are ploughing a more fruitful furrow than
the lingering imitators of Mendelssohn and Schu-
mann." And feeling this time that actual old age was
approaching as quickly as his seventieth birthday, he
doubled his labor and his pious activity. Rising at four
o'clock, he did not leave his table till seven, when he
went to mass and then breakfasted and rested for a
moment and took up his pen again till noon. After his
siesta, he gave his lessons from four to six, took a hand
at whist and dined every evening with the Princess in
the Via del Babuino.

As for the latter, for twenty years she had held to

FRANZ LISZT 277

the same schedule and her strange habits. Even Liszt
was compelled to wait in the antechamber for ten min-
utes, like any mere caller, in order not to introduce into
the air-tight room the least freshness from out-of-doors.
Seated in the centre of her web, this laborious spider
continued to spin page out of page while she smoked
the cigars, of double strength and double length, which
the excise-office made for her. She talked chiefly of
politics and theology. Hohenlohe came often, in his
cardinal's equipage, and he plotted with his relative a
surprise which he had in store for their old friend : the
honorary canonry of Albano. Liszt was astonished
when they informed him of this, but he admitted to
himself that this handsome present from the Church
gave him singular pleasure. It was not that he planned
to draw any vanity from it, but after all it advanced
him further on that ecclesiastical road whose peaceful
honors had constantly stirred his obedient soul. "The
idea of outward advancement," he explained, "was as
strange as possible to me. I was only following, in ail
simplicity and honesty of heart, the old Catholic tend-
ency of my youth. If I had not been opposed in my
first fervor by my dear good mother and my confessor,
the Abbe Bardin, it would have led me to the seminary
in 1830 and later into the priesthood. One reasons at
random on the ideal. I know nothing loftier than that
of the priest meditating, practising and teaching the
three theological virtues, faith, hope, charity, volun-
tarily sacrificing his life, crowned with martyrdom
when God grants it! Would I have been worthy of
such a vocation ? Divine grace alone could have made
it possible, As it is, the loving tenderness of my mother

278 FRANZ LISZT

and the prudence of the Abbe Bardin have left me in
great danger from temptations which I have been able
to resist very inadequately. Poetry, music and also
some grain of native revolt have too long subjugated
me. Miserere mei, Domine."

His installation as Canon of Albano took place on
Sunday, October 12, 1879. Just two days before, he
finished writing his Second Waltz of Mephisto and the
Saraband on Handel's Almire. One might call these a
last pledge to the evil one, the final admittance of that
native revolt of which he spoke without quite enough
shame. But although he had full right now to the vio-
let sash, he never wore it except in photographs. Truth
to tell, he felt he was too old and his beauty had left
him. Warts were appearing on his face. In the mir-
ror, where for so long he had seen the great command-
ing eagle, now appeared an old, almost featureless vul-
ture which he examined with melancholy. "The fatigue
of age and some indescribable inner sadness, the fruit
of a too long experience, increases and renders any ap-
pearance in public very painful to me." Which did
not prevent him from running about a little wherever
they were playing his music, at Vienna, at Baden, at
Antwerp, in Holland. He appeared at the concerts
as a spectator beside a new and very young friend,
Lina Schmalhausen. This was a last flirtation, though
quite honorable and respectable. But Liszt, as the
Princess put it, needed a feminine enthusiasm, feminine
society, and existence would have seemed to him taste-
less if he had not had within reach some beautiful liv-
ing being from whom his heart could draw some final

FRANZ LISZT 279

harmonies. Accompanied by this housekeeper, he es-
tablished himself at Budapest, where they had prepared
for him this time a comfortable apartment on the prem-
ises of the Conservatory itself. They had realized at
last that the old Gypsy needed consideration, care and
even surveillance. His mania of generosity went so
far, in fact, that he gave away not only his superfluous
money but even what was necessary for him. At Wei-
mar, his unworthy pupils stole from him, took money
from his bureau drawers. Billow came expressly to
put things in good order, and he expelled these Judases
from the cohort of disciples. As for Franz's celebrated
health, it was breaking up also. He suffered from a
serious swelling of the feet which the doctor diagnosed
as the beginning of dropsy. But it was impossible to
make him follow a regimen and deprive himself of his
cognac. He had had the habit for too long. For this
overworked man, who had been travelling for fifty
years, sought and found in this the necessary stimulus.
In the month of July, 1881, at Weimar, he had a
fall on his staircase from which he recovered with
difficulty. Biilow and his daughter Daniela came to
take care of him. The cordial and admiring relations
between the two men were resumed as before. No one
could resist loving Liszt. If Biilow had suffered from
an "excess of brains, intelligence, study, work, travel
and fatigue," as his ex-father-in-law said, he was now,
with the latter and Wagner, one of the foremost musi-
cians in Germany. The old trio of the musicians of the
future had brilliantly justified the ambitious name which
they had chosen.

280 FRANZ LISZT

One day, Alexander Borodin, passing through Wei-
mar, timidly approached the famous little house in the
grand-ducal park and had himself announced. He had
scarcely handed in his card when a long figure dashed
out, with a long nose, a long black frock-coat and long
white hair.

"You have written a beautiful symphony," growled
a sonorous voice in excellent French. "You are very
welcome, I am delighted to see you. Only two days
ago I played your symphony to the Grand Duke who
was charmed by it. Your andante is a masterpiece.
The scherzo is ravishing. . . . And then this passage
is ingenious."

And the long fingers of iron began to plunder the
piano, to use Mussorgsky's expression. The old man
played without ceasing to talk and overwhelmed the
Russian with questions. The other replied, apologized
for his inexperience (he had been a doctor), observed
that he modulated to excess.

"Heaven keep you from touching your symphony,"
Liszt protested. "Your modulations are neither exag-
gerated nor incorrect. You have, in fact, gone very
far, and that is precisely your rnerit. Do not listen to
people who wish to hold you back ; believe me, you are
on the right road. Your artistic instinct is such that
you need have no fear of being original. Remember
that the same advice was given in their time to Bee-
thoven, Mozart, etc. If they had followed it, they
would never have become masters. You know Ger-
many; much is being written here. I am drowning in
an ocean of music that submerges me. But God, how
empty it is ! Not one living idea. In your country a

FRANZ LISZT 281

vivifying current prevails. Soon or late (late prob-
ably), this current will break out a new path here."

He scolded him for not publishing his scores and
complimented him for not having studied at any con-
servatory.

"That is just like myself, though I am directing one !
But even if your works are neither performed nor pub-
lished, even if they meet with no success, believe me,
they will still clear an honorable path for themselves.
You have an original talent; do not listen to anyone
and work in your own way."

Borodin noted that Liszt spoke very fluently in both
French and German, but that one would take him at
first for a Frenchman. He did not sit down for an
instant, but walked about gesticulating; there was no
suggestion of the ecclesiastic about him. The follow-
ing day he saw him again at the rehearsal of a concert
which Liszt was giving that evening in the cathedral
of Jena. The latter arrived in his cassock, with the
Baroness von Meyendorfi on his arm and followed by
the usual procession of his pupils of both sexes. He
paid particular attention to a new "indispensable,"
Mile. Vera Timanova, which made all the others blush
with anger. "When Liszt's turn came," Borodin wrote
to his wife, "he made his way to the end of the choir,
and soon his gray head appeared behind the instru-
ment. The rich, powerful sounds of the piano rolled
like waves under the Gothic vaults of the temple. It
was divine. What sonority, what power, what pleni-
tude! What a pianissimo and what a morendol We
were transported. When the Funeral March of Cho-

282 FRANZ LISZT

pin came, it was evident that this piece had not been
arranged. Liszt improvised on the piano, while the
organ and the violoncello played the written parts.
Every time the theme returned, it was something dif-
ferent, but it is difficult to conceive what he was able
to do with it. The organ drew out pianissimo the har-
monies in thirds of the bass. The piano, with the
pedal, gave the full harmonies pianissimo. The violon-
cello sang the theme. It was like the faraway sound
of funeral bells that still sound when the preceding
vibration has not yet died away. Nowhere have I ever
heard anything like it."

Before the concert, Borodin was invited to dine with
Liszt, Fraulein von Meyendorff and the favorites.
Then they all went together to the cathedral where
"my old Venus," as Borodin called him, played the
Funeral March in a totally different way. He impro-
vised again. "That is the way he always deceives you,"
said the pretty Timanova. "He's an odd original."

Borodin returned to Weimar. He was present at the
lessons, at meals, at evening parties at the Grand
Duke's or the Baroness's. He heard the admirable
little Vera play a rhapsody of the master and saw the
latter embrace her by way of a compliment, while the
young woman kissed his hand. This was the estab-
lished usage. And as Liszt liked to hasten his friend-
ships, he played in duet with Borodin the recent com-
positions of that artist. When the latter suppressed
something, "Why," cried Liszt, "do you not play that?
It is so beautiful. Your modulations are models.
There is nothing like them in Beethoven or in Bach,
and in spite of its novelty tHe work is above reproach."

FRANZ LISZT 283

As the Baroness insisted that the Russian should sing,
he made them listen to a chorus from Prince Igor.
Borodin had fallen in love with his old Venus. Un-
known persons bowed to him in the streets of Weimar
because they had seen him on the arm of Liszt. "So
you see, my little dove, how your very faithful husband
has been touched by grace."

Liszt, however, had not properly recovered from
his fall. He had violent attacks of nausea which wor-
ried his friends, but this did not prevent him from
working passionately at the Canticle of the Sun of
Saint Francis of Assisi. Was it not logical that after
all the painted Saint Francises that decorated the
churches there should also be a musical one ? He com-
posed also a last symphonic poem, From the Cradle to
the Grave, then went for his convalescence to his
daughter's at Bayreuth. Wagner was finishing there
the composition of his Parsifal. Still a hundred pages '
to write. "It needs nothing more," wrote Liszt, "but
care, genius and his tormenting labor." We are at the
end of September, 1881. The following month, Liszt
celebrated the seventieth anniversary of his birth. But
the old man could no longer travel alone, and for the
first time his granddaughter Daniela accompanied him
to Rome, where they alighted together at the Hotel
Alibert. A general fatigue overwhelmed him. He
slept a little everywhere, in company as at his work-
table. He was unwilling to admit this, however, and
replied that he always felt very well. But he had to
have a very high temperature in his bedroom, for he
was always chilly. For his birthday, his friends ar-

284 FRANZ LISZT

ranged a little musical ceremony at the Caffarelli Pal-
ace. On the morning of that day he received a letter
from Carolyne: "Dear, dear good soul, may your sev-
entieth anniversary begin under the auspices of the sun
that brightened the 22nd of October at Woronince.
Let us thirst for eternity. It is for eternity that I
have desired to possess you in God and to give you to
God. A good year and many good years, dear great
man. You have great things to do. And may God who
gives us the means of doing them give you also the
recompense here below and above. While awaiting
the complete recompense, let us rejoice in the little par-
tial payments. . . . Good-by for the present. Saint
Francis has worked so many miracles. He will work
one for you who cover him with glory. Secular glory."

The weather being very beautiful, they went out
for a drive to the Villa Doria-Pamphili, the largest in
Rome, strewn with fountains and statues. Liszt sat
on the ground and took the newspaper out of his pocket
while the others went on with their drive. On return-
ing, they found him asleep, his hair blowing in the light
wind. A lamb was brushing against him. Horses and
sheep were grazing all about him.

In the spring of 1882, he received the piano score of
Parsifal with this dedication : "O friend ! My Franz,
first and only one, receive this expression of thanks
from your Richard Wagner." This year the first pres-
entation was to take place. At the end of January,
in spite of his extreme fatigue, he set out to fulfil his
double duty at Weimar and Budapest But the great
event at Bayreuth gave him strength and enthusiasm.
"My point of view remains fixed : absolute admiration,

FRANZ LISZT 285

excessive, if you wish. The Parsifal is more than a
masterpiece it is a revelation in the musical drama.
It has been justly said that after the Song of Songs of
the terrestrial love in Tristan und Isolde, Wagner has
gloriously traced in Parsifal the supreme song of divine
love."

A few days later he married his granddaughter Blan-
dine (Blandine II, as she was called) to a Sicilian, the
Count di Gravina, and he gave her a modest grand-
fatherly gift. How absurd for this man who had
squandered fortunes everywhere! But he was poor
now, a fact that gave him a Tolstoyan joy. For the
rest, he did not know how to save. When, one day,
someone stole his beautiful fur mantle which hung in
his vestibule, he rejoiced. He had never had the sense
of property.

In the late autumn he set out for Venice to join the
Wagners who had come there to spend the winter. He
carried in his baggage the first twenty volumes of the
Causes of the Princess Wittgenstein, which she had just
sent to him. "Truly," he wrote to her, "you derive
from Saint Augustine, Saint Bernard, Saint Thomas,
Saint Theresa, Saint Catherine of Siena and a little
from Joseph de Maistre too; for if it will not dis-
please you you share with him the militant and pro-
phetic sense." And a little later : "In truth, I have no
understanding of politics and theology; consequently,
three-quarters of your labor is beyond my grasp. As
for aesthetics, I confess also that I have not yet found
the Ariadne's thread that would draw me through the
labyrinth of the many systems of the ancient and mod-
ern philosophers. Let us hope that I may at last seize

286 FRANZ LISZT

the true thread in the theory you elucidate of the emo-
tions and sensations. Between the two I see myself
condemned to a sceptical disappointment." No doubt
Liszt was right in thinking that for people to under-
stand one another well it is necessary not to explain too
much.

The Wagners were settled in the Vendramin Palace
on the Grand Canal. The apartment reserved for
Liszt was on the entresol. It consisted of three rooms,
with an antechamber and a charming drawing-room the
windows of which opened on the canal. The parish
church was only a hundred steps away. The old man
went there to hear mass every morning, according to
his custom. Wagner received no visits; his life was
entirely spent with his family and intimate friends.
Cosima admirably regulated the whole andament of
the house: the chambermaids, the cook and footman
brought from Bayreuth, besides two permanently em-
ployed gondoliers. In the morning he remained at
home. At two o'clock they dined. Then Liszt worked
at the Saint Stanislas. Sometimes, to refresh himself,
he sat down at the piano. Then Wagner arrived,
locked the door, seated himself beside the instrument,
and the two old comrades plunged into their favorite
music, that of Beethoven and Bach. In the evening,
before supper, Liszt played a little more, after which,
they sat at whist till the cards fell from the grand-
father's hands.

Saint Stanislas advanced quickly. He interrupted it
suddenly to write the elegy, The Funeral Gondola,
not knowing through what strange presentiment.
"Then he left Venice and went back to Pest. On Feb-

FRANZ LISZT 287~

ruary 14, in the morning, his friend Abranyi entered
his bedroom and said to him: "My dear master, no
doubt you have already heard the news ? Wagner is
dead." Liszt, who was at his work-table, made no
movement and continued to write. After a very long
time he replied, without turning his head: "And why
not?" There was another silence. Liszt broke it. "I
too," he said, "have been buried many times." Other
persons dropped in at this moment, confirming the
news. Then telegrams poured in. At last came this
one from Daniela : "Mother begs you not to come. Re-
main quietly at Pest. We are taking the body to Bay-
reuth, after a brief stop at Munich." Having read it,
Liszt said, with the utmost calm: "He today, I tomor-
row." Then he resumed his letter to Carolyne : "You
know my sad feeling about life : to die seems to me sim-
pler than to live. Death, even preceded by the long
and frightful sufferings of 'the dying,' to use the strik-
ing phrase of Montaigne, is our deliverance from an
involuntary yoke, the consequence of original sin. Job
is my patron in the Old Testament, and the good thief
Saint Dimas in the New."

XXVII

"Is Liszt working at the Saint Stanislas? Is he tak-
ing care of his health?" asked the Princess in her let-
ters to the friends at Weimar. Well, no, he entirely
neglected the dropsy that was invading him and
thought of nothing but the preparation of a musical
commemoration for the anniversary of Wagner. Since
his return to Weimar, he had immediately become ab-
sorbed in this, and on May 22 this solemn festival took
place under his inspiration. They played seven or
eight of the master's works. Liszt in person directed
the Enchantment of Good Friday and a piece he had
just finished for the occasion, On the Tomb of Richard
'Wagner.

Then he set to work composing again and took out
from his drawer the Requiem, written in former days
in the monastery of Santa Francesca Rornana beside
the Forum. He rehandled it, endeavoring to give to
the sense of death a character of Christian hope. The
warm light of Rome, which he called up from the mar-
ble ruins and the cypresses of the Palatine, shone in the
strophe of the recordare. The old man tried to intro-
duce into it a sense of the easiness of "dying well," the
recompense of those with whom faith is beauty and
enthusiasm for God are mingled in one single com-
mandment.

He spent this whole year at Weimar and at Pest In
the spring of 1884, the Stanislas was sufficiently ad-

288

FRANZ LISZT 289

vanced for him to conduct fragments of it in public.
The people of Weimar found the composer old and
tired; but he carried himself like a young man when he
mounted to the desk. Like the great Arnauld, Liszt
said: "Have we not eternity in which to rest?" At
Bayreuth he was present at Parsifal, but he did not
even see his daughter who shut herself up in her mourn-
ing for eighteen months, without making any exception,
even in favor of her father. Then he returned to Hun-
gary and made a visit to the estate of his friend, Count
Zichy. The peasants arranged an ovation for him.
Several hundred young girls flung flowers at him, as
in the glorious days when he scattered love from city
to city. And because he was charmed with the spon-
taneous, caresses of his people, he gave a free concert.
After the last piece, an old peasant made himself the
interpreter of the crowd and addressed these words to
the great man: "Your name the Count has told us.
What you are able to do you have shown us. But what
you are we have learned ourselves. May the powerful
God of the Hungarians bless you."

Returning to Rome towards the end of autumn, he
passed a few weeks there only to set out on the road
again at the beginning of the year 1885. A sudden
hunger for travelling had seized him anew, as if he
wished to survey for the last time the cities where he
had loved and struggled : Florence, Vienna, Antwerp,
Strasbourg, Aix-la-Chapelle, Munich, Leipzig, Pres-
bourg, Carlsruhe, not to mention Weimar and Buda-
pest. In spite of his increasing fatigue, he dragged
himself from gala to gala, wrote music on the corners
of hotel tables, dined with prelates and princes, played

290 FRANZ LISZT

whist, gave lessons, granted sittings to celebrated por-
trait painters, suffered in his eyes and his nerves. "I
waste my time more or less deliberately. Owing to the
weakness of age, work has become more difficult for
me. Nevertheless, I continue laboriously to fill my
music-paper."

He returned to Rome worn out, and when he came
to balance his accounts he found that for all his pains
the year had yielded him little. In the first days of
1886 took place at Rome the first Liszt concert, and
the old master played there in public for the last time.
Then he arranged for what he called his "supreme
grand tour." On the eve of his departure, he climbed
the staircase in the Via del Babuino to bid farewell to
Carolyne. The two old people kissed each other on the
forehead. For several years they had felt, at each of
these separations, that it might well be the last. But
they did not admit this to each other.

"My weariness of life is extreme," said Liszt, "and
in spite of my willingness I no longer feel that I am
good for anything."

She tried to give him confidence, she for whom time
no longer flowed. Liszt shook his head, without con-
viction, but without sadness. He had been so long pre-
paring for the journey from which one does not return
that he was ready to mount the heavenly chariot when-
ever God wished.

In the meanwhile, he must see again the towns, the
concert halls, the friends and the old scenes of his
happiness. At Florence, through which he passed first,
he remembered a certain Poniatowsky ball at which,
leaving the dancers, he had gone out into the Tuscan

FRANZ LISZT 291

night to take before the Perseus of Cellini an oath that
he would go forth and conquer in the struggle between
good and evil. That was forty-eight years ago. At
Venice the old man warmed himself on the Riva degli
Schiavoni at the precise spot where, at the time of his
first visit with Marie, he planned to write his Life of
a Musician, a Long Dissonance without a Final Resolu-
tion. He was off again to Vienna, just long enough
to salute Magnolette, and then set out for Liege. A
great Liszt concert, triumph, flowers. In Paris he
alighted at the Hotel de Calais where mail was await-
ing him, which he read with the rapture of the old days.
"My master, Ossiana is yours every moment of her
existence. She loves you better than all the other in-
habitants of Paris, the most ardent included. Come,
you can easily understand that I am beside myself and
that I am barely able to write these lines which fill me
with horror but are nothing but the truth." He opened
another. "My husband is mad over the army. This
month he is going to receive a title. He will not wish
for some time to return to his family. He is going to
Dalmatia again, and into Herzegovina. I have also
sent my son to Kalocsa, so that he may receive a sound
education. I am absolutely free to do what seems good
to me. Well, Monseigneur, I ask you frankly and
without ceremony: Will you have me as your dame de
compagnie during your journey to London?" Ah,
what an interesting adventure life is when one receives
ten letters of this kind every morning ! It is only popes
who have no age, as he had written yesterday to Caro-
lyne.

On March 25, they gave the Mass of Gran at Saint-

292 FRANZ LISZT

Eustache, and because of the unprecedented success of
the work it was given again on April 2. A beautiful
revenge for the year 1866 and the criticisms of the bit-
ter Berlioz. And as, precisely, this was the feast-day
of Saint Francis de Paul, the old Liszt remembered the
young Franz and the illness that had befallen him when
he was obliged to separate from Mile, de Saint-Cricq.
He hastened to the church and humbled himself before
the patron saint of the Minors.

London. A magnificent performance of the Eliza-
beth at Saint James's Hall. A call upon the Prince of
Wales. An audience with the Queen. Luncheon with
the Duchess of Cambridge whom he had known in
1840, in the days of the late Countess of Blessington
whom he had thought as beautiful as one of those mar-
bles which Lord Elgin carried away from the Par-
thenon. The Duchess was now eighty years old. As
she was deaf, Liszt used the pedal a great deal in play-
ing a little piece to her, and the two old people then
perceived, laughing, that they were both in tears.

Antwerp. Liszt performed his duties as an abbe
during Holy Week; then he returned to Paris. On
May 8, before seven thousand persons, Colonne di-
rected the Elizabeth in the hall of the Trocadero. And
Gounod, who was sitting beside the master, gave him
the compliment that he appreciated most: "It is built
of holy stones.'' The painter Munkacsy, his Hun-
garian compatriot, finished a portrait of him, after
which Liszt settled down once more in his little cell at
Weimar. Frau Wagner came and made him a visit
and brought him the news of the betrothal of her
daughter Daniela to young Professor Thode. Liszt

FRANZ LISZT 293

promised to be present at the marriage, which was to
take place at Bayreuth at the beginning of July. And
a few days later, the fiance gave him a true pleasure by
coming to see him and reading to him part of his work
on Saint Francis of Assisi.

In spite of a sudden feeling of weakness, Liszt ar-
rived on the appointed day at Bayreuth and was pres-
ent at his granddaughter's wedding. Then, to keep
another promise, he went to visit Munkacsy at Colpach
in Luxembourg. They thought him much broken there.
In spite of an extreme fatigue and a bad cold, he wrote
many letters. The last was addressed to his friend
Agnes, the clever pupil of the Karlplatz in Weimar,
for whom he had preserved an unblemished affection
for thirty years. * With you there is no brodo lungo to
fear. You understand and say things in an admirable
rhythm." Why had he not found this rhythm every-
where? But it necessitated a freedom that is unknown
in love.

On July 20, in the evening, he took the train for Bay-
reuth again. He felt more ill. His bronchial tubes
were affected. A gay little pair, no doubt on their wed-
ding journey, burst into his compartment. The lovers
embraced each other before the open window which
they refused to shut, in spite of this old fellow's timid
request. Liszt was unable to insist. He sank back
into his corner and fell asleep, and the young people
smiled as they watched this ecclesiastic with the for-
midable face murmuring his prayers.

Arriving at Bayreuth, he took lodgings as usual in
a house adjoining Wahnfried, where he occupied a
bedroom on the ground floor- He immediately went

294 FRANZ LISZT

to bed with a high fever. Nevertheless, in the evening,
he made an effort to get up to go and see his daughter,
for the Wagner performances were beginning and
Cosima had resumed her receptions. The next day
he felt so ill that he did not leave his bedroom. Some
people came to see him in the evening. He played a
game of whist with his faithful friends, but it was only
with difficulty that he was able to hold the cards. On
Saturday, the 24th, he received several pupils and went
again to Wahnfried. On Sunday they gave Tristan,
and, against the advice of the doctor, he had himself
taken to the theatre where, in Wagner's box, he held
out till the death of Isolde.

On the following day he was more gravely ill. He
was deprived of the cognac to which he had been so
long accustomed and he lost his strength more and more

quickly. On Tuesday, July^j&j&k*-a doctor called in
consultation diagnoslE^lTcongestion of the lungs and
prescribed a complete rest. After this his door was
shut except to his daughter, who had a bed set up in
the antechamber. On Friday he was delirious, trem-
bled in all his limbs, started out of his sleep to fall
again into delirium. He asked his servant: "It is
Thursday today, isn't it? No, Friday." This greatly
struck him, for he had the Italian superstition about
this day. He had remarked that the year 1886 began
with a Friday and that his birthday fell on a Friday
also. His daughter asked him if he wished to see any-
one, no doubt thinking of a priest. He replied, with
decision : "Nobody." If he needed anything? "Noth-
ing." Towards two o'clock in the morning, on Satur-
day the 3 ist, after an agitated sleep, this great uncon-

FRANZ LISZT 295

scious body rose straight up in bed uttering fearful
cries. And his strength was so great that he overthrew
his servant, who tried to make him lie down again.
Then he sank down motionless. The doctor made an
injection in the region of the heart. Towards ten
o'clock he moved his lips a little. They leaned over to
listen. He said: "Tristan." This was his last word.
At noon he was dead.

Bayreuth, nevertheless, was dressed in flags and ban-
ners. The Crown Prince had arrived. They were
about to present at the theatre the drama of which I
have just written the name. Nothing was to be changed
in the programme of the festival. Liszt, as a matter
of fact, would not have tolerated it. There was noth-
ing to do but to place him on the bier and carry him
over to Wahnfried. A small basket was enough to
contain the poor possessions of the Franciscan : his cas-
sock, a little linen, and several pocket-handkerchiefs.
This was his whole heritage. We know how he had
disposed of the rest.

What does the funeral ceremony matter ? No doubt
it was what it should have been: speeches, no music.
The body was buried in the cemetery of Bayreuth,
though it might well have been claimed by Weimar and
Budapest. I do not think it was dressed in the habit
of the third order, as Liszt had wished. About thirteen
years before he had also written: "If possible, let them
take me to my last home in the evening ; two or three
men paid for this will be enough to carry me. I do not
wish to trouble others to follow me to the cemetery,
when I can no longer serve them in any way."

296 FRANZ LISZT

To serve was the password of this destiny, To this
must be added : to love.

May this story enlighten me and enlighten others in
regard to the meaning of this word, which is so encum-
bered with banalities and obligations.

*
* *

When the Princess Wittgenstein heard the news, she
took to her bed, refused to receive anybody, and did
not reply to any letters. All winter she remained in bed
without granting herself any respite in her work. At
the end of February, 1887, she signed the last page of
her immense work. A month later, her daughter and
Cardinal Hohenlohe, coming to see her one evening,
found her dead in her bed. She had kept the promise
she had made herself: "If I cannot see him any more;
I shall send my angels to him."

*

* *

At the moment of closing this story I was anxious
to make a pilgrimage to Tivoli. Some charming Italian
friends carried me in an automobile over a dry, flat
plain. At the foot of the Tiburtine mountains rose
that fortress, flanked by the villa built in the sixteenth
century by Cardinal d'Este. Nature, aided by a mas-
terly fancy, has triumphed here over the architects of
Rome. From terraces that drop in cascades among

FRANZ LISZT 297

the waterfalls one looks out over the alley of the fa-
mous cypresses. This cathedral of verdure must have
exalted the soul of Liszt, and one cannot make the
tour of the hanging gardens without evoking the tall,
thin abbe who walked there, with his hands behind his
back. When the Cardinal d'Este built this palace, he
unconsciously destined it to become a pleasant ruin,
where a musician was to live his humble life. Prince
Hohenlohe spent very little time there. His great
apartment was usually closed. The watch-light that
people saw at night burned in Liszt 9 s quarters, four
little rooms on the floor above.

A guard leads us up under the roof where two old
women, who occupy these rooms now, receive us with
a kind of distrust. But the door opens when they have
learned the reason of our visit. More than forty years
ago, these good souls were the servants of Liszt. Noth-
ing more is necessary to produce on both sides a lively
current of sympathy. They show us his bed, his work-
room, the table under the open gallery where he took
his meals, a signed photograph placed beside the image
of the Holy Fir gin. They reply to my questions:
"Well, he was always dressed as an abbe, in a long,
closed frock-coat, with one button, and a bomba hat.
He was generous, he always had his purse in his hand.
And he embraced us we were young, petites, you
know. He liked embracing very much. How many
ladies came here to see him! The most beautiful ones.
One of them sent the master camellias every day. He
worked and played all day. At five o'clock in the morn-
ing he took his lamp and went to mass. In Christmas

298 FRANZ LISZT

week, when the pifferari came down from the moun-
tains with their flocks, playing their bagpipes, he made
them climb up here, feasted them and collected their
melodies on his piano"

At this moment the monastery bells began to peal. I
remembered the Excelsior, composed while he was lis-
tening to them, from which Wagner declared he had
borrowed the motif of the bells in Parsifal. The an-
cient carillon of San Francesco di Tivoli was thus the
source of the mystic supper of Montsalvert. This asso-
ciation is not surprising. One must seat oneself before
the threshold of this dwelling of the man of poverty,
under the roof of the palace, and turn towards the nar-
row stone terrace that extends out into space. The
old artist strode up and down it every day for hours.

Watch him coming and going, this tall figure cut
against the sky, for the platform drops of sheer on
every side. The mere name of Liszt was at that time,
in Europe, synonymous with passion. There was some-
thing supernatural about his whole personality. Even
the countryfolk dwelling in Tivoli, who followed him
to kiss his hands or touch his gown, felt this. The ill-
disposed called it Satanism. Still others treated him
as an adventurer. But we who have looked into him
more deeply know that the passions of this strong tem-
perament had never spoiled the limpidity of his heart.
The humble acolyte had preserved all his life a happy
faith.

Fra Beato died in the city of the popes and his re-
mains are buried under a flagstone in Santa Maria
sopra Minerva. But one seeks him in spirit in a clots-

FRANZ LISZT 299

ter in Florence. It is just the same with the Angelica
of music: his tombstone may lie under the rains of
Bavaria, but it is from the Villa d'Este, from its high-
est terrace, that one must watch the soul of the musi-
cian taking wing towards heaven.

Paris Etoy Rome, 1925.