had provided herself, by the sale of a portion of her dowry, with a
sum, as La Mara says, of a million roubles--equal to about $750,000--a
tidy little parcel for an eloping couple.

For her husband and mother-in-law she left letters--it would seem that
there must have been little else to leave--explaining that she would
never return. At the same time she instituted divorce proceedings, and
announced that she was asking the Church to grant her freedom. Being a
Catholic, it was necessary for her to persuade the Pope himself to
permit her to wed Liszt. In the meanwhile, her husband went to the Czar
and loudly bewailed the loss of his daughter and all his money. The old
story--"My daughter! Oh, my ducats! Oh, my daughter! Oh, my Christian
ducats! Justice! the law! My ducats and my daughter!"

The princess fled across the Russian border, just at the time of the
Revolution of 1848. At the Austrian boundary Liszt's faithful valet met
her; in Ratibor she found Liszt's friend, the Prince Lichnovski, who
some months after fell a martyr to the revolution. He conducted her to
Liszt. A few days later they visited the prince for two weeks at one of
his castles. The troubles of the revolution and the barricaded streets
drove them from the country to Weimar, where Liszt had been given the
post of Kapellmeister.

It was this third-rate town that became the birthplace of a new school
of German opera, for years the hub of the musical universe. Here in
Weimar the princess lived thirteen years. She placed herself under the
protection of the Grand Duchess of Weimar, Maria Polovna, the sister of
the Czar and a friend of her childhood. She chose the Altenburg château
for her home. A year later, Liszt, who had found a neighbouring hotel
too remote, took up his home in one of the wings of the château. Here