certain pleasure in going through the world, an artistic
Belisarius asking the lovers of his art for their obolus. But he
had a wife (his first wife), weak in health, and anxious of mind,
and to protect her from every care is his chief desire--a desire
which has something beautiful and pathetic in it, and is the
redeeming feature of the many appeals for a loan, and sometimes
for a present, which occur in these letters.

Liszt was only too willing to give, but his means were extremely
limited. He had realized large sums during his artistic career;
but he was liberal almost to a fault, and poor artists, inundated
Hungarian peasants, and the Beethoven monument at Bonn profited a
great deal more by his successes than he did himself. What little
remained of his savings had been settled upon his aged mother and
his three children, and at the time here alluded to his only
fixed income was the salary of less than [pounds] 200, which he
derived from the Weimar Theatre. This explanation he himself
gives to Wagner, in answer to the following remarkable sentence
in one of that master's letters:--"I once more return to the
question, can you let me have the 1,000 francs as a gift, and
would it be possible for you to guarantee me the same annual sum
for the next two years?" The 1,000 francs was forthcoming soon
afterwards, but poor Liszt had to decline the additional
obligation for two other years.

The above passage is quoted as an instance of many others, and
one must admire the candour of Wagner's widow, who has not
suppressed a single touch in the picture of this beautiful
friendship. But Liszt's help was not limited to material things.
What was infinitely more valuable to Wagner, and what excited his