Liszt came by himself, and my house at once became a musical centre.  He had finished his Faust and Dante Symphonies since I had seen him, and it was nothing short of marvellous to hear him play them to me on the piano from the score.  As I felt sure that Liszt must be convinced of the great impression his compositions made on me, I felt no scruples in persuading him to alter the mistaken ending of the Dante Symphony.  If anything had convinced me of the man’s masterly and poetical powers of conception, it was the original ending of the Faust Symphony, in which the delicate fragrance of a last reminiscence of Gretchen overpowers everything, without arresting the attention by a violent disturbance.  The ending of the Dante Symphony seemed to me to be quite on the same lines, for the delicately introduced Magnificat in the same way only gives a hint of a soft, shimmering Paradise.  I was the more startled to hear this beautiful suggestion suddenly interrupted in an alarming way by a pompous, plagal cadence which, as I was told, was supposed to represent Domenico.

‘No!’ I exclaimed loudly, ’not that!  Away with it!  No majestic Deity!  Leave us the fine soft shimmer.’

‘You are right,’ said Liszt.  ’I said so too; it was the Princess who persuaded me differently.  But it shall be as you wish.’

All well and good—­but all the greater was my distress to learn later that not only had this ending of the Dante Symphony been preserved, but even the delicate ending of the Faust Symphony, which had appealed to me so particularly, had been changed, in a manner better calculated to produce an effect, by the introduction of a chorus.  And this was exactly typical of my relations to Liszt and to his friend Caroline Wittgenstein!

This woman, with her daughter Marie, was soon to arrive on a visit too, and the necessary preparations were made for her reception.  But before these ladies arrived, a most painful incident occurred between Liszt and Karl Ritter at my house.  Ritter’s looks alone, and still more, a certain abrupt contradictoriness in his way of speaking, seemed to put Liszt into a state in which he was easily irritated.  One evening Liszt was speaking in an impressive tone of the merits of the Jesuits, and Ritter’s inopportune smiles appeared to offend him.  At table the conversation turned on the Emperor of the French, Louis Napoleon, whose merits Liszt rather summarily insisted that we should acknowledge, whereas we were, on the whole, anything but enthusiastic about the general state of affairs in France.  When Liszt, in an attempt to make clear the important influence of France on European culture, mentioned as an instance the French Academie, Karl again indulged in his fatal smile.  This exasperated Liszt beyond all bounds, and in his reply he included some such phrase as this:  ’If we are not prepared to admit this, what do we prove ourselves to be?  Baboons!’ I laughed, but again Karl only smiled—­this time, with