ith
convulsive throes. The musician found in this fresh impulse something
congenial to his own fiery, restless, aspiring nature. He entered
eagerly into all the intellectual movements of the day. He became a
St. Simonian and such a hot-headed politician that, had he not been an
artist, and as such considered a harmless fanatic, he would perhaps have
incurred some penalties. Liszt has left us, in his "Life of Chopin," and
his letters, some very vivid portraitures of the people and the events,
the fascinating literary and artistic reunions, and the personal
experiences which made this part of his life so interesting; but,
tempting as it is, we can not linger. There can be no question that this
section of his career profoundly colored his whole life, and that
the influence of Victor Hugo, Balzac, and Mme. George Sand is very
perceptible in his compositions not merely in their superficial tone
and character, but in the very theory on which they are built. Liszt
thenceforward cut loose from all classic restraints, and dared to fling
rules and canons to the winds, except so far as his artistic taste
approved them. The brilliant and daring coterie, defying conventionality
and the dull decorum of social law, in which our artist lived, wrought
also another change in his character. Liszt had hitherto been almost
austere in his self-denial, in restraint of passion and license, in
a religious purity of life, as if he dwelt in the cold shadow of the
monastery, not knowing what moment he should disappear within its gates.
There was now to be a radical change.

One of the brilliant members of the coterie in which he lived a life of
such keen mental activity was Countess D'Agoult, who afterward became
famous in the literary world as "Daniel Stern." Beautiful, witty,
accomplished, imaginative, thoroughly in sympathy with her friend
George Sand in her views of love and matrimony, and not less daring
in testifying to her opinion by actions, the name of Mme. D'Agoult had
already been widely bruited abroad in connection with more than one
romantic escapade. In the powerful personality of young Franz Liszt,
instinct with an artistic genius which aspired like an eagle, vital with
a resolute, reckless will, and full of a magnetic energy that overflowed
in everything--looks, movements, talk, playing--the somewhat fickle
nature of Mme. D'Agoult was drawn to the artist like steel to a magnet.
Liszt, on the other hand, easily yielded to the refine