At fourteen he had dedicated his first composition to the other sex.  It was a set of “exercises,” and the compliment was paid to Lydia Garella, a quaint little hunchback, whom he used afterward to refer to as his first love.  But it was later, when he was giving lessons to support his mother, and just turned seventeen, that he drifted into what was really his first love.  The Comte de Saint Criq, then Minister of the Interior, had an only daughter, the seventeen-year-old Caroline.  The young comtesse’ mother gave her into Liszt’s charge for musical education.  The young comtesse was, they say, of slender frame and angelic beauty, and deeply imbued with that religious ardour which, as in Liszt’s case, often modulates as imperceptibly into love, as an organist can gradually turn a hymn into a jig, or an Italian aria into a hymn.

The mother was fond of presiding at the music lessons, and of leading the young teacher to air his views about religion and life, and she watched with pleasure the gradual development of what was inevitable, a more than musical sympathy between the daughter and the teacher.  But the romance seemed to win her approval, and when suddenly she saw that she was soon to die, she made a last request of her husband, that he should not refuse the young lovers their happiness.  He allowed his wife to die in confidence that the affair met his approval, but without the faintest intention of permitting so insane a thing as a marriage of his daughter with an untitled musician.  His business affairs, however, kept him away from home, and from thought upon the subject.  After the death of the mother, the comtesse and the pianist met and wept together; then resumed their music lessons, reading much between the lines, and far preferring dreamy duets to difficult solos.

Liszt had read little but music and religion; the slim, fair comtesse had read much verse and romance.  So she was his teacher in that literature which would most interest a brace of young lovers.  There was no one at home to note how late he stayed of evenings, and one night he returned to his own house to find it locked and his mother asleep.  Rather than disturb her, he spent the night on the steps.  Another evening, Franz and Caroline found parting such sweet sorrow, that when he reached her outer door, he found it locked for the night.  He was compelled to call the porter from those slumbers which only doorkeepers know, and this man was doorkeeperishly wrathful at having his beauty-sleep broken; he growled his rage.  This is the only time recorded when Franz Liszt failed to respond to a hint for money.  His head was too high in the clouds, no doubt.  The servant, thus suddenly awakened to the impropriety of affairs, hastened the next morning to inform the comte that his daughter was studying the music of the spheres as well as that of the piano, and that her lessons were prolonged till midnight.

The next time Franz came to teach, the ghoulish porter gleefully informed him that his master wished to speak to him.  The comte was most politely firm, and murdered the young love with most suave apologies for the painful amputation.  The difference in rank, it went without saying, put marriage out of the question, and, therefore, all things considered, he could not derange monsieur to the giving of more music lessons,—­for the present, at least.