seriously. The Pope had called him "My dear Palestrina," and he desired
to reform church music as Palestrina had done.

The fact that this ecclesiastical passion was brief, does not prove
that it was not sincere; in Liszt's case it would rather prove its
sincerity. And by corollary the fact that it was sincere, rather proved
that it would be brief.

The artistico-ecclesiastical life, or, as the German puts it so much
more patly, "_das klösterlich-künstlerische Leben_," began to wear upon
him. For a time Liszt remained in Rome, taking a dwelling in the Via
Felice; later, in June of the year 1863, he moved to the Oratorio of
the Madonna del Rosario, where the Pope, Pius IX., visited him to hear
his miraculous music. He saw the princess often, usually dining with
her, and letters fluttered thickly between his home and hers in the
Piazza di Spagna, and later in the Via del Babuino.

Liszt was never a man for one of your gray existences. He was homesick
for Weimar, and was a constant truant from Rome. But he had duties
enough with his ambition as a composer and conductor, and his cloud of
pupils whom he taught without price. To his excursions we owe four
volumes of letters to the princess. The volumes average over four
hundred pages each of smallish type. They are in French, and have been
all published, the last volume appearing in 1902, under the editorship
of La Mara. Also a publication of the princess' letters has been
announced by her daughter, who wisely believes that in a matter which
has become the gossip of the world, the best defence is the fullest
possible presentation.

In Liszt's letters there is not much of the grand style he had affected