It was this third-rate town that became the birthplace of a new school of German opera, for years the hub of the musical universe.  Here in Weimar the princess lived thirteen years.  She placed herself under the protection of the Grand Duchess of Weimar, Maria Polovna, the sister of the Czar and a friend of her childhood.  She chose the Altenburg chateau for her home.  A year later, Liszt, who had found a neighbouring hotel too remote, took up his home in one of the wings of the chateau.  Here he spent the most profitable years of his artistic life.  His twelve Symphonic Poems, his Faust and Dante Symphonies, his Hungarian Rhapsodies, and many other important works, including also literary compositions, he achieved here.  The irritation he had felt at the superficial meddling, and domineering criticism of his would-be Muse, the Comtesse d’Agoult, was changed to such a communion as the old Roman king Numa enjoyed with his inspiring nymph, Egeria.

During the princess’ stay in Weimar, constant pressure was brought upon her to return to Russia to arrange a settlement of affairs.  She feared returning to that great prison-land, which cannot be easily entered or left, lest they should forbid her return to Liszt.  Even threats to declare her an exile and confiscate her goods, would not move her.  Eventually the property she had inherited from her father was put in her daughter’s name, by the Czar’s order—­an arrangement Liszt had long pleaded for in vain.  The husband’s feelings were mollified by the appropriation to him of the seventh part of her property, and the arrangement of a guardianship for the daughter.

The prince, being a Protestant, now proceeded to get a divorce, which he obtained without difficulty.  He speedily married a governess in the household of Prince Souvaroff.  None the less, the struggles went on for the freedom of Princess Carolyne.  In 1859 her daughter, Marie, was married to Prince Constantin zu Hohenlohe-Schillingsfuerst, aid-de-camp and later grand steward of the Austrian emperor.  Now that the daughter was safely disposed of, the princess took active steps for her own freedom.  She chose, as a pretext for the dissolution of her marriage, the statement that she had entered into it unwillingly at her father’s behest.  Her Polish relatives were shocked at the idea of divorce, and brought witnesses to prove that the first years of her marriage were peaceful and content.  But in spite of this the divorce was granted in Russia, and the Pope gave it his sanction.

The princess, however, was not satisfied with a merely technical success.  She would consummate her marriage with Liszt in a blaze of glory and with all the blessings of religion upon it.  In the spring of 1860, she had gone to Rome to further her divorce proceedings.  Liszt was to arrive and be married on his fiftieth birthday, the princess then being forty-two.  All went merrily as a marriage bell.  It is generally believed that Liszt’s “Festklaenge” was written for this occasion as a splendid orchestral wedding festival of triumph.