22. To Count Leo Festetics in Pest

[Printed in F. von Schober's "Letters about Liszt's Sojourn in
Hungary."]

Dear Count,

Shall you like to have me again at Pest this year? I know not. In
any case you are threatened with my presence from the 18th to the
22nd of next December. I shall come to you a little older, a
little more matured, and, permit me to say, more finished an
artist, than I was when you saw me last year, for since that time
I have worked enormously in Italy. I hope you have kept me in
remembrance, and that I may always count on your friendship,
which is dear to me.

What joy, what an immense happiness it will be to be once more in
my own country, to feel myself surrounded by such noble and
vigorous sympathies, which, thank God, I have done nothing to
forfeit in my distant and wandering life. What feelings, what
emotions will then fill my breast! All this, dear Count, I will
not attempt to express to you, for in truth I should not know
how. Let it suffice you to know that the love of my country, of
my chivalrous and grand country, has ever lived most deeply in my
heart; and that, if unhappily it does not seem likely that I can
ever show to my country what a love and devotion I feel for it,
the sentiments will remain none the less unchanged in my heart.

But I will not tire you any longer with myself and my sentiments.