mer of 1870. I had
gone to the theatre at Munich, where I was staying, to hear Wagner's
opera of the "Rheingold," with my daughter and her husband. We had
already taken our places, when S---- exclaimed to me, "There is
Liszt." The increased age, the clerical dress, had effected but
little change in the striking general appearance, which my daughter
(who had never seen him since 1842, when she was quite a child)
recognized immediately. I went round to his box, and, recalling
myself to his memory, begged him to come to ours, and let me
present my daughter to him; he very good-naturedly did so, and the
next day called upon us at our hotel, and sat with us a long
time....

His conversation on matters of art (Wagner's music, which he and we
had listened to the evening before) and literature was curiously
cautious and guarded, and every expression of opinion given with
extreme reserve, instead of the uncompromising fearlessness of his
earlier years; and the abbe was indeed quite another from the Liszt
of our summer on the Rhine of 1842.

Liszt never composed any very good music; arrangement of the music
of others was his specialty; and his versions of Schubert's,
Weber's, and Mozart's finest melodies for the piano were the _ne
plus ultra_ of brilliant and powerful adaptation, but required his
own rendering to produce their full effect; and by far the most
extraordinary exhibition of skill I ever heard on the piano was his
performance of the airs from the Don Giovanni, arranged by himself.
His literary style had the same qualities and defects as his music:
brilliancy and picturesqueness, and an absence of genuineness and
simplicity. He wrote a great deal of musical criticism, and an
interesting life of Chopin.

His conversation was sparkling and dazzling, and full of startling
paradoxes; he had considerable power of sarcastic repartee, and once
or twice is reported to have encountered the imperious queen of
Austrian society, Madame de Metternich, with her own weapons, very
successfully.

She patronized Thalberg, and affected to depreciate Liszt; but
having invited them both to her house on one occasion, thought
proper to address the latter with some impertinent questions about a
professional visit he had just been paying to Paris, winding up
with, "Enfin, avez-vous fait de