rtuned to take the lad. Only the letter from Hummel secured the
boy an audience, for Czerny was already overburdened with pupils. But
when he had listened to the lad's playing, he consented to take him as a
pupil, merely saying that he showed a certain degree of promise. It is
sternly true that Czerny did not fully come into the Liszt faith until
after that concert of April Thirteenth, Eighteen Hundred Twenty-three,
when Beethoven, ripe with years, crowded his way to the front and kissed
the player on both cheeks, calling him "my son." Such a greeting from
the great Master spoke volumes when we consider the lifelong aversion
that Beethoven held toward "prodigies," and his disinclination to attend
all concerts but his own.

And thus did Franz Liszt begin his professional pilgrimage, consecrated
by the kiss of the Master.

Paris was the next step--to Paris, the musical and artistic center of
the world. To win in Paris meant fame and fortune wherever he wished to
exhibit his powers. The way the name of Franz Liszt swept through the
fashionable salons of Paris is too well known to recount. Scarcely
thirteen years of age, he played the most difficult pieces with peculiar
precision and power. And his simple, boyish, unaffected manner--his
total lack of self-consciousness--won him the affection of every
mother-heart. He was fondled, feted, caressed, and took it all as a
matter of course. He had not yet reached the age of indiscretion.

* * * * *

Music is a secondary sexual manifestation, just as are the songs of
birds, their gay and gaudy plumage, the color and perfume of flowers
that so delight us, and the luscious fruits that nourish us--all is sex.
And then, do you not remember that expression of Renan's, "The
unconscious coquetry of the flowers"? Without love there would be no
poetry and no music. All the manifest beauty of earth is only Nature's
nuptial decoration.

James Huneker, not always judicious, but a trifle more judicial than
others that might be named, declares that two women, making a
simultaneous attack upon the great composer, caused him to cut for
sanctuary, and hence we have the Abbe Liszt, thus proving again that
love and religion are twin sisters.

The old-time biographers can easily be placed in two classes: those who
sought to pillory their man, and those who sought to protect him.
Neither one told the truth; but each gave a picture, more or less
blurred, of a being