peaceful and content. But in spite of this the divorce was granted in
Russia, and the Pope gave it his sanction.

The princess, however, was not satisfied with a merely technical
success. She would consummate her marriage with Liszt in a blaze of
glory and with all the blessings of religion upon it. In the spring of
1860, she had gone to Rome to further her divorce proceedings. Liszt
was to arrive and be married on his fiftieth birthday, the princess
then being forty-two. All went merrily as a marriage bell. It is
generally believed that Liszt's "Festklänge" was written for this
occasion as a splendid orchestral wedding festival of triumph.

Accordingly, at the proper time, Liszt went to Rome--as he thought.
Really, he was going to Canossa. The priest was bespoken, and the altar
of the church of San Carlo al Corso decorated. On the very eve of the
wedding, when Liszt was with the princess, they were startled to
receive a messenger from the Pope, demanding a postponement of the
marriage, and the delivery for review of the documents upon which the
divorce had been granted. The papers were surrendered, and the
disconsolate princess gave way to a superstitious resignation to fate.

It seems that the amiable relatives of the princess, chancing to be in
Rome and hearing of the wedding, determined to prevent it at all cost.
Before the Pope they charged her with securing the divorce by perjury.
The princess had friends at court, who could have procured the
satisfactory conclusion of the matter. The Cardinal Hohenlohe offered
his own chapel for the marriage. But the princess was as immovable in
her new determination as she had been in her old.

She had resisted for thirteen years the efforts of the Russian court to