tired and not
himself, and it was a most transient thing. When I think what a
little savage Tausig often was, and how cuttingly sarcastic Kullak
could be at times, I am astonished that Liszt so rarely lost his
temper. He has the power of turning the best side of every one
outward, also the most marvelous and instant appreciation of what
that side is. If there is anything in you, you may be sure that
Liszt will know it. On Monday I had a most delightful tete-a-tete
with Liszt, quite by chance. I had occasion to call upon him for
something, and strange to say, he was alone, sitting by his table
writing. Generally all sorts of people are up there. He insisted
upon my staying for a while, and we had the most amusing and
entertaining conversation imaginable. It was the first time I ever
heard Liszt really talk, for he contents himself mostly with making
little jests. He is full of esprit. Another evening I was there
about twilight and Liszt sat at the piano looking through a new
oratorio which had just come out in Paris, upon "Christus." He
asked me to turn for him, and evidently was not interested, for he
would skip whole pages and begin again, here and there. There was
only a single lamp, and that a rather dim one, so that the room was
all in shadow, and Liszt wore his Merlin-like aspect. I asked him
to tell me how he produced a certain effect he makes in his
arrangement of the ballad in Wagner's "Flying Dutchman." He looked
very "fin" as the French say, but did not reply. He never gives a
direct answer to a direct question. "Ah," said I, "you won't tell."
He smiled and then immediately played the passage. It was a long
arpeggio, and the effect he made was, as I had supposed, a pedal
effect. He kept the pedal down throughout, and played the beginning
of the passage in a grand sort of manner, and then all the rest of
it with a very pianissimo touch, and so lightly, that the
continuity of the arpeggios was destroyed, and the notes seemed to
be just strewn in, as if you broke a wreath of flowers and
scattered them according to your fancy. It is a most striking and
beautiful effect, and I told him I didn't see how he ever thought
of it. "Oh, I've invented a great many things," said he,
indifferently--"this, for instance"--and he began playing a double