claiming him for her own. And such would have
been the case, were it not for the fact that one of the children of the
Countess d'Agoult was sick unto death. He knew of the sleepless
vigils--the weary watching of the fond mother.

The child died, and Franz Liszt went to the parent in her bereavement,
to offer the solace of religion and bid her a decent, respectful
farewell, ere he left Paris forever. He thought grief was a cure for
passion, and that in the presence of death, love itself was dumb. How
could he understand that, in most strong natures, tears and pain, and
hope and love are kin, and that each is in turn the manifestation of a
great and welling heart!

Liszt stood by the side of the Countess as the grave closed over the
body of her firstborn child. And as they stood there, under the
darkening sky, her hand went groping blindly for his. She wrote of this,
years and years after, when seventy winters had silvered her hair and
her steps were feeble--she wrote of this, in her book called,
"Souvenirs," and tells how, in that moment of supreme grief, when her
life was whitened and purified by the fires of pain, her hand sought
his. The deep current of her love swept the ashes of grief away, and she
reached blindly for the hands--those wonderful music-making hands of
Liszt--that they might support her. And standing there, side by side, as
the priest intoned the burial service, he whispered to her, "Death shall
not divide us, nor is eternity long enough to separate thee from me!"

* * * * *

It was only a few days after that Liszt left Paris--but not for a
monastery. He journeyed to Switzerland, and stopping at Basle he was
soon joined by the Countess, her two children, and her mother.

All Paris was set in an uproar by the "abduction." The George Sand
school approved and loudly applauded the "eclat"; but it was condemned
and execrated by the majority. As for the injured husband, it is said he
gave a banquet in honor of the event; his feelings, no doubt, being
eased by the fact that the goodly dot his wife had brought him at her
marriage was now his exclusive possession. He had never gauged her
character, anyway, and he inwardly acknowledged that her mind was of a
sort with which he could not parry.

And now she had wronged him; yet in his grief he took much satisfaction,
and in his martyrdom there was sweet solace.

The chief blame fell on Liszt, and the accusation that he had "b