his first love. The Comte de Saint Criq, then Minister of the Interior,
had an only daughter, the seventeen-year-old Caroline. The young
comtesse' mother gave her into Liszt's charge for musical education.
The young comtesse was, they say, of slender frame and angelic beauty,
and deeply imbued with that religious ardour which, as in Liszt's case,
often modulates as imperceptibly into love, as an organist can
gradually turn a hymn into a jig, or an Italian aria into a hymn.

The mother was fond of presiding at the music lessons, and of leading
the young teacher to air his views about religion and life, and she
watched with pleasure the gradual development of what was inevitable, a
more than musical sympathy between the daughter and the teacher. But
the romance seemed to win her approval, and when suddenly she saw that
she was soon to die, she made a last request of her husband, that he
should not refuse the young lovers their happiness. He allowed his wife
to die in confidence that the affair met his approval, but without the
faintest intention of permitting so insane a thing as a marriage of his
daughter with an untitled musician. His business affairs, however, kept
him away from home, and from thought upon the subject. After the death
of the mother, the comtesse and the pianist met and wept together; then
resumed their music lessons, reading much between the lines, and far
preferring dreamy duets to difficult solos.

Liszt had read little but music and religion; the slim, fair comtesse
had read much verse and romance. So she was his teacher in that
literature which would most interest a brace of young lovers. There was
no one at home to note how late he stayed of evenings, and one night he
returned to his own house to find it locked and his mother asleep.
Rather than disturb her, he spent the night on the steps. Another
evening, Franz and Caroline found parting such sweet sorrow, that when