conjured forth from their own inner consciousness.
Franz Liszt was naturalized in the Faubourg Saint Germain. It was here
that he was first hailed as the infant prodigy, and proud ladies, at his
performances, pressed to the front and struggled for the privilege of
imprinting on his fair forehead a chaste and motherly kiss.

* * * * *

Eight years had passed: years of work and travel and constant growing
fame. The youth had grown into a man, and his return to the scene of his
former triumphs was the signal for a regathering of the clans to note
his progress--or decline. The verdict was that from "Le Petit Prodige,"
he had evolved into something far more interesting--"Le Grand Prodige."
Tall, handsome, strong, and with a becoming diffidence and a half-shy
manner, his name went abroad, and he became the rage of the salons. His
marvelous playing told of his hopes, longings, fears and
aspirations--proud, melancholy, imploring, sad, sullen--his tones told
all.

Fair votaries followed him from one performance to another. Leaving out
of the equation such mild incidents as the friendship for George Sand,
which began with a brave avowal of platonics, and speedily drifted into
something more complex; also the equally interesting incident of his
being invited to visit the Chateau of the lovely Adele Laprunarede, and
the Alpine winter catching the couple and holding them willing captives
for three months, blocked there in a castle, with nothing worse than a
conscience and an elderly husband to appease, we reach the one, supreme
love-passion in the life of Liszt. The Countess d'Agoult is worthy of
much more than a passing note.

At twenty years of age she had been married to a man twenty-one years
her senior. It was a "mariage de convenance"--arranged by her parents
and a notary in a powdered wig. It is somewhat curious to find how many
great women have contracted just such marriages. Grim disillusionment
following, true love holding nothing in store for them, they turn to
books, politics or art, and endeavor to stifle their woman's nature with
the husks of philosophy.

Count d'Agoult was a hard-headed man of affairs--stern, sensible and
reasonably amiable--that is to say, he never smashed the furniture, nor
beat his wife. She submitted to his will, and all the fine, girlish,
bubbling qualities of her mind and soul were soon held in check through
that law of self-protection which causes a woman to