The Countess d’Agoult’s father, Viscount Flavigny, was an old Royalist nobleman.  While an emigre during the revolution, he had married the beautiful daughter of the Frankfort banker, Bethman.  After the Flavignys returned to France, their daughter, an extremely beautiful blonde, was brought up, partly at the Flavigny chateau, partly at the Sacre Coeur de Marie, in Paris.  Talented beyond her years, her wit and beauty won her much admiration.  At an early age she married Count Charles d’Agoult, a French officer, a member of the old aristocracy and twenty years her senior.

When she first met Liszt she was twenty-nine years old, had been married six years and was the mother of three children.  She still was beautiful, and in her salon she gathered around her men and women of rank, esprit and fame.  In 1835 Liszt left Paris after the concert season there.  The Countess followed him, and the next heard of them they were in Switzerland.  They remained together six years, Cosima, born in 1837, being one of the three children resulting from the union.  In the Countess’s relations with Liszt there appears to have been a curious mingling of la grande passion and hauteur.  For when, soon after she had joined him in Switzerland, he urged her to secure a divorce in order that they might marry, she drew herself up and replied:  “Madame la Comtesse d’Agoult ne sera jamais Madame Liszt!” Certainly none but a Frenchwoman would have been capable of such a reply under the same circumstances.  Equally French was her husband’s remark when, the Countess’s support having been assumed by Liszt, he expressed the opinion that throughout the whole affair the pianist had behaved like a man of honor.

After the separation of Liszt and Countess d’Agoult, he entrusted the care of the three children to his mother.  During a brief sojourn in Paris, Wagner met Cosima, then a girl of sixteen, for the first time.  She formed with Liszt, Von Buelow, Berlioz and a few others the very small, but extremely select, audience which, at the house of Liszt’s mother, heard Wagner read selections from his “Nibelung” dramas.  In 1855, the burden of the care of the children falling too heavily upon Liszt’s mother, the duty of looking after the daughters was cheerfully undertaken by the mother of Hans von Buelow, who resided in Berlin.

In a letter written by Von Buelow in June, 1856, he speaks of them in these interesting terms:  “These wonderful girls bear their name with right—­full of talent, cleverness and life, they are interesting personalities, such as I have rarely met.  Another than I would be happy in their companionship.  But their evident superiority annoys me, and the impossibility to appear sufficiently interesting to them prevents my appreciating the pleasure of their society as much as I would like to—­there you have a confession, the candor of which you will not deny.  It is not very flattering for a young man, but it is absolutely true.”  Yet, a year later, he married Cosima, one of the girls whose “superiority” so annoyed him.