Her “Souvenirs” justify the accusation of unusual vanity as the mainspring in her motives, but if it were only her passion for conquest that made her seek Liszt, she was punished bitterly.  In 1834 she captured him, and the preliminary formalities of flirtation were hastily overpassed.  But once they were embarked on the maelstrom of passion, they seem to have been of exquisite torment and terror to each other.  Liszt fell into a period of atheism which, to his constitutionally religious soul, was agony.  As for the comtesse, death entered upon the romance and took away one of her three children.  For awhile she was only a broken-hearted mother, and the intrigue seems to have had a moment’s pause, but only to return.

Now, however, it had for Liszt something of unfreshness and monotony.  He determined to break loose, and in the spring of 1835 told the comtesse that he was going to leave her.  She, however, would not consent.  He yielding as gracefully as he could, took a lodging in a quiet part of the city, where his life consisted of music, literature, and the comtesse, who visited him incessantly.  Her love had quite infatuated her, to take the tone of the time; nowadays we might say that she found it so serious that she desired to make it honest.  The means she hit upon were such as might strike a foolish woman as an inspiration.  Believing that the long way round was the short way home, she thought to atone for her past foibles by casting them into sudden insignificance—­to clear the sultry air by a thunder crash.

When Liszt heard that the comtesse planned to leave her husband, and even her children, and go into foreign exile with him, he felt that the comtesse was taking the bit into her teeth with a vengeance, but saw as he would on the lines, and cry “whoa” as he would, the runaway comtesse still insisted on running away.

Liszt called on her mother to interfere; she was run over.  He appealed to her former confessor; his staying hand was shaken loose.  He called on the venerable family notary; the old man was upset by the roadside—­as I shall be also if I do not release this runaway metaphor.

The comtesse’s mother persuaded the daughter to leave Paris for Basle, hoping that a change of scene would bring a change of mind; Liszt followed.  It seems to me, however, more probable that the mother, learning that her daughter was determined to leave Paris with Liszt, went with her in the desperate effort to save appearances.  But, however that may be, we find the comtesse and the mother at one hotel, and Liszt at another.  A few days later, Liszt returned to his hotel to find his room choked with the comtesse’ trunks, and to learn that the mother had gone back to Paris in despair.  The comtesse had, as they say, “brought her knitting” and come to stay.