[Illustration:  The Princess Carolyne in her later years at Rome.]

One of the billets relates to an incident that has become historic.  Wagner had been obliged, because of his participation in the revolution, to flee from Dresden.  He sought refuge with Liszt in Weimar, but, learning that the Saxon authorities were seeking to apprehend him, decided to continue his flight to Switzerland.  He was without means and, at the moment, Liszt, too, was out of funds.  In this extremity, Liszt despatched a few lines to the Princess.  “Can you send me by bearer sixty thalers?  Wagner is obliged to flee, and I am unable at present to come to his aid. Bonne et heureuse nuit.”  The money was forthcoming, and Wagner owed his safety to the Princess.  This is but one instance in which, at Liszt’s instigation, she was the good fairy of poor musicians.  About a year after the Princess settled in the Altenburg, Liszt, too, took up his residence there.  From that time until they left it, it was the Mecca of musical Europe.  Thither came Von Buelow and Rubinstein, then young men; Joachim and Wieniawski; Brahms, on his way to Schumann, who, as the result of this visit from Brahms, wrote the famous article hailing him as the coming Messiah of music; Berlioz, and many, many others.  The Altenburg was the headquarters of the Wagner propaganda.  From there came material and artistic comfort to Wagner during the darkest hours of his exile and poverty.

Wendelin Weissheimer, a German orchestral leader, a friend of Liszt and Wagner, and of many other notable musicians of his day, has given in his reminiscences (which should have been translated long ago) a delightful glimpse of life at the Altenburg.  He describes a dinner at which Von Bronsart, the composer, and Count Laurencin, the musical writer, were the other guests.  At table the Princess did the honors “most graciously,” and her “divinity,” Franz Liszt, was in “buoyant spirits.”  After the champagne, the company rose and went upstairs to the smoking-room and music salon, which formed one apartment, “for with Liszt, smoking and music-making were, on such occasions, inseparable.”  One touch in Weissheimer’s description recalls the Princess’s early acquired habit of smoking.

“He [Liszt] always had excellent Havanas, of unusual length, ready, and they were passed around with the coffee.  The Princess also had come upstairs.  When Liszt sat down at one of the two pianos, she drew an armchair close up to it and seated herself expectantly, also with one of the long Havanas in her mouth and pulling delectably at it.  We others, too, drew up near Liszt, who had the manuscript of his ‘Faust’ symphony open before him.  Of course he played the whole orchestra; of course the way in which he did it was indescribable; and—­of course we all were in the highest state of exaltation.  After the glorious ‘Gretchen’ division of the symphony, the Princess sprang up from the armchair, caught hold of Liszt and kissed him so fervently that we all were deeply moved. [In the interim her long Havana had gone out.]”