s granddaughter Daniela von
Buelow to a man with the ominous sounding name of "Thode." Daniela was
the daughter of Liszt's daughter, Cosima, by her first husband. The
marriage took place at Wagner's home, "Wahnfried," in Bayreuth.

It was appropriate that Liszt should spend his last years in the
company of this Wagner, for whose success he had been the chief
crusader, as for the success of how many another famous musician, and
for the charitable comfort of how numberless a throng, and in what
countless ways! It was doubly appropriate that his last appearance in
public should be at the performance of "Tristan and Isolde"--that
utmost expression of love that was fiery and lawless and yet worthy of
the peace it yearned for and never found.

Liszt died on the 31st of July, 1886. His will declared the princess to
be his sole heir and executrix. She outlived him no long time. On the
8th of March, 1887, she died of dropsy of the heart. She was buried in
the German cemetery next to St. Peter's, in Rome. Her grave bore the
legend:

"Yonder is my hope." At her funeral they played the Requiem, Liszt had
written for the death of the Emperor Maximilian. She had wished that
this music should "sing her soul to rest."

CHAPTER II.

RICHARD WAGNER

Surely, one would say, if love were ever to be the woof of any life, it
must interweave the life of this man Wagner; for he gave to every whim
and fervour of the passion an expression so nearly absolute that we are
driven almost to say: Old as music is, and ancient as love songs are,
music never truly gave full voice to desire in all its throbs until
Richard Wagner created a new orchestra, a new libretto, a new music, a
new harmony, and a new fabric of melody.

"Tristan and Isolde" seems to be so nearly the last word in dramatised
love that it seems also to be nearly the first word. From the
Vorspiel's opening measures, gaunt and hungry with despair and longing,
to the last measures of the Liebestod, sublime with resignation and
divinely sad with the apotheosis of adoration, this opera sounds every
note of the emotion of man for woman, and woman for man.

Surely, you would say, the creator of this masterwork must have had a
heart thrilled with mighty passion for womankind; surely he must have
lived a life of strange devotion.

But how often, how often we must warn ourselves against judging the
creator from his creations, the artist from his art. In his letter to
Liszt, ann