When the comtesse left Nohant, which Liszt never saw again, they went to Lyons, where he gave a concert for the benefit of the poor and working people.  For what purposes of benevolence indeed did Liszt not give concerts!  So great and so discriminating and so self-sacrificing was his charity, that it would almost plead atonement for a million such unconventionalities as his.  He was not content to devote the proceeds of a single concert to some object of charity, but even gave money, and whole tours.  Besides this concert at Lyons, and various others, one might mention the concert given for the flood sufferers at Pesth, and for the poor of his native town, and the concert tour by which he made Beethoven’s monument possible at Bonn.  Add to this the other sums he scattered to poor artists like Wagner from his meagre purse, and you will see one reason why women, who are more susceptible and perceptive of such qualities of character, were almost as helpless to resist Liszt’s personality as he theirs.  Even when he was “la petit Litz,” he was found holding a street-cleaner’s broom while he went to change a gold piece.  And in his later years, his servant always filled two of his pockets with coin, one with copper, and one with silver; and the man used to say that when his master came home at night, the copper mine was usually untouched, but the silver deposit exhausted.

It was in Lyons that the comtesse began her literary career, by a French translation of Schubert’s “Erl-Koenig.”  She later obtained a considerable fame, as I have said, under the name of Daniel Stern.  In the fall of 1837 Liszt and the comtesse went to Italy, where, especially at Bellaggio, they appear to have been genuinely happy.  He seems to be describing himself when he writes: 

“Yes, my friend, when the ideal form of a woman floats before your dreaming soul, a woman whose heaven-born charms bear no allurement for the senses, but only wing the soul to devotion, and if you saw at her side a youth of sincere and faithful heart, weave these forms into a moving story of love, and give it the title, ’On the Shores of the Lake of Como.’”

To us, who think of Liszt always by his last pictures, presenting him in his venerable age, it is hard to remember that at this time he was only twenty-seven.  It was at this time, too, that he wrote the only composition he ever dedicated to the comtesse.  In later years, it was almost the only composition of his that she would praise; it was a fantasia on the “Huguenots.”  The two lovers continued their wanderings through Italy and Austria, he giving concerts for the flood sufferers and the Beethoven monument and she travelling with him.  While in Rome in 1839, the comtesse had borne him a son, Daniel, having previously given him two daughters,—­Blandine, who married the French statesman, Emile Olivier, and died in 1862; and Cosinia, the famous wife of Wagner.  All three children had been legitimised immediately upon their birth.