which gave nobility to so much of Liszt's character, now showed itself;
he sold his grand piano to pay the debts his father had left him, and
sent for his mother to come to Paris, where he supported her by giving
piano lessons. Then, as later, he found plenty of pupils, the
difference being that then, as not later, he took pay for his lessons,
though not even then from all.

Here he was at sixteen, tall and handsome, and with a face
of winsomeness that never lost its spell over womankind.
Sixteen-year-older that he was, he was a man of great fame, and the
grind of acquiring technic was all passed. Moscheles had already said
of him in print: "Franz Liszt's playing surpasses everything yet heard,
in power and the vanquishing of difficulties." Here he was, then,
young, beautiful, famous, a dazzling musician, and Hungarian. What do
you expect?

It makes small difference what you expect, for the reality was that his
heart was eager for the seclusion of a monastery; his soul pined for
religious excitement only! At fourteen he had begun to rebel against
his nickname, "Le petit Litz." It was with the utmost difficulty that
his father had been able to keep him from making religion his career,
and giving up his already glittering fame. Never in his life did he
cease to thrill with an almost hysterical passion for churchly affairs
and ceremonies.

At fourteen he had dedicated his first composition to the other sex. It
was a set of "exercises," and the compliment was paid to Lydia Garella,
a quaint little hunchback, whom he used afterward to refer to as his
first love. But it was later, when he was giving lessons to support his
mother, and just turned seventeen, that he drifted into what was really