Liszt's life was so lengthy and so industriously amorous, that it is
possible only to float along over the peaks, to touch only the high
points. Why, his letters to the last of his loves alone make up four
volumes! And yet, for a life so proverbially given over to flirtations
as his, the beginnings were strangely unprophetic. He had reached the
mature age of six before he began to study the piano; compared with
Mozart, he was an old man before he gave his first concert--namely,
nine years. Then the poverty of his parents and the ambition of his
father found assistance in a stipend from Hungarian noblemen, and he
was sent to Vienna to study. When he was eleven years old, after one of
his concerts, Beethoven kissed him. He survived. Then on to Paris and
duchesses and princesses galore. Here he became a proverb of popularity
as "Le petit Litz"--the French inevitably gave some twist to a foreign
name, then as to-day, when two of their favourite painters are
"Wisthler" and "Seargent."

Liszt's childhood was therefore largely fed upon the embraces and
kisses of rapturous women, even as was the young Mozart's, the
difference being that it became a habit in Liszt's case. Even then he
used to throw money among the gamins, as later he scattered it in how
many directions, with what liberality, and with what princeliness, and
from what a slender purse!

The father and mother had gone to Paris with him; but soon the mother
went back to Austria--she was a German, the father alone being
Hungarian. With his father the lad remained, and found him a severe and
domineering master. But in 1827 he died, leaving his sixteen-year-old
son alone in Paris. That stalwart self-reliance and sense of honour,