ather found teaching this gifted child not only a labor of love, but
a task smoothed by the extraordinary aptness of the pupil. He was
accustomed to say to the young Franz: "My son, you are destined to
realize the glorious ideal that has shone in vain before my youth. In
you that is to reach its fulfillment which I have myself but faintly
conceived. In you shall my genius grow up and bear fruit; I shall renew
my youth in you even after I am laid in the grave." Such prophetic words
recall the vision of the Genoese woman, who foresaw the future greatness
of the little Nicolo Paganini, a genius who resembled in many ways the
phenomenal musical force embodied in Franz Liszt. When the lad was very
young, perhaps not more than six, he read the "Kene" of Chateaubriand,
and it made such an indelible impression on his mind that he in after
years spoke of it as having been one of the most potent influences of
his life, since it stimulated the natural melancholy of his character
when his nature was most flexible and impressible.

At the age of nine he made his first appearance in public at Odenburg,
playing Bies's concerto in three flats, and improvising a fantasia so
full of melodic ideas, striking rhythms, and well-arranged harmony as to
strike the audience with surprise and admiration. Among the hearers was
Prince Esterhazy, who was so pleased with the precocious talent shown
that he put a purse of fifty ducats in the young musician's hand. Soon
after this Adam Liszt went to Pres-burg to live, and several noblemen,
among whom were Prince Esterhazy, and the Counts Amadee and Szapary, all
of them enthusiastic patrons of music, determined to bear the burden of
the boy's musical education. To this end they agreed to allow him six
hundred florins a year for six years. Young Liszt was placed at Vienna
under the tutelage of the celebrated pianist and teacher Czerny, and
soon made such progress that he was able to play such works as those
even of Beethoven and Hummel at first sight. When Liszt did this for
one of Hummel's most difficult concertos, at the rooms of the music
publisher one day, it created a great sensation in Vienna, and he
quickly became one of the lions of the drawing-rooms of the capital.
Czerny himself was so much delighted with the genius of his charge
that he refused to accept the three hundred florins stipulated for his
lessons, saying he was but too well repaid by the success of the pupil.

Though toiling with inc