fire--nothing is so depressing as continual, mushy adulation. He
sought out the Countess, and together they traversed the border-land of
metaphysics, and surveyed, as the days passed, all that intellectual
realm which the dawn of the Twentieth Century thinks it has just
discovered.

She taunted him into a defense of George Sand, who had but recently
returned from her escapade to Venice with Alfred de Musset. Liszt
defended the author of "Leone Leoni," and read to the Countess from her
books to prove his case.

When haughty, proud and religious ladies mix mentalities with sensitive
youths of twenty-four, the danger-line is being approached. The Grand
Passions that live in history, such as that of Abelard and Heloise,
Petrarch and Laura, Dante and Beatrice, swing in their orbit around
world-weariness. Love does not concern itself with this earth alone--it
demands a universe for its free expression. And the only woman who is
capable of the Grand Passion--who stakes all on one throw of the
dice--is the melancholy woman, with this fine, religious reserve. No one
suspected the Countess d'Agoult of indiscretion--she was too cold and
self-contained for that!

And so is the world deceived by the Eternal Paradox of things--that law
of antithesis which makes opposites look alike. Beneath the calm dignity
of matronly demeanor the fires of love were banked. Probably even the
Countess herself did not know of the volcano that was smoldering in her
heart. But there came a day when the flames burst forth, and all the
reserve, poise, quiet dignity, caution and discretion were dissolved
into nothingness in love's alembic.

Poor Franz Liszt!

Poor Countess d'Agoult!

They were powerless in the coils of such a passion. It was a mad tumult
of wild intoxication, of delicious pain, of burning fears, and vain,
tossing unrest. The woman's nature, stifled by its six years of coaxing
marital repression, was asserting itself. Liszt did not know that a
woman could love like this--neither did the woman. Once they parted,
after talking the matter over solemnly and deciding on what was best for
both--they parted coldly--with a mere touching of the lips in a last
good-by.

The next week they were together again.

Then Liszt fled to the Abbe Lamennais, and in tears sought, at the
confessional and in dim retirement, a surcease from the passion that was
devouring him. Here was a pivotal point in the life of Liszt, and the
Church came near then,