As soon as his intention to give lessons became known, many aristocratic pupils came and found him a remarkable teacher.  Among his new pupils was Caroline Saint Cricq, youngest daughter of Count Saint Cricq, then Minister of the Interior, and Madame his wife.

Caroline, scarcely seventeen, the same age as her young teacher, was a beautiful girl, as pure and refined as she was talented.  Under the eyes of the Countess, the lessons went on from month to month, and the mother did not fail to see the growing attachment between the young people.  But love’s young dream was of short duration.  The Countess fell ill and the lessons had to be discontinued.  Caroline did not see her devoted teacher till all was over.

There was now another bond between them, the sympathy over the loss of their dear ones.  The Count had requested that the lessons should be resumed.  But when the young teacher remained too long in converse with his pupil after the lessons, he was dismissed by the Count, and all their sweet intercourse came to an abrupt end.

Mme. Liszt did all she could to soothe the grief and despair of her son.  For days and weeks he remained at home, neglecting his piano and his work.  He again thought of the church with renewed ardor and told his mother he now had decided to become a monk.  His spirits sank very low; he became ill, unable to leave the house and it was reported everywhere he had passed away.

Again he rallied and his strong constitution conquered.  As strength slowly returned, so also did his activity and love of life.

During his long convalescence he was seized with a great desire for knowledge, and read everything he could lay hands on.  He would often sit at the piano, busying his fingers with technic while reading a book on the desk before him.  He had formerly given all his time to music and languages; now he must know literature, politics, history and exact sciences.  A word casually dropped in conversation, would start him on a new line of reading.  Then came the revolution of 1830.  Everybody talked politics, and Franz, with his excitable spirits, would have rushed into the conflict if his mother had not restrained him.

With all this awakening he sought to broaden his art, to make his instrument speak of higher things.  Indeed the spirit must speak through the form.  This he realized the more as he listened to the thrilling performances of that wizard of the violin, Paganini, who appeared in Paris in 1831.  This style of playing made a deep impression on Liszt.  He now tried to do on the piano what Paganini accomplished on the violin, in the matter of tone quality and intensity.  He procured the newly published Caprices for violin and tried to learn their tonal secrets, also transcribing the pieces for piano.