It was quite a novelty to me to see Liszt with these young girls, and to watch him in his intercourse with his son, then a growing lad.  Liszt himself seemed to feel strange in his fatherly position, which for several years had only brought him cares, without any of the attendant pleasures.

On this occasion we again resumed our reading of the last act of Gotterdammerung, which brought us to the longed-for end of the tetralogy.  Berlioz, who looked us up during that time, endured these readings with quite admirable patience.  We had lunch with him one morning before his departure, and he had already packed his music for his concert tour through Germany.  Liszt played different selections from his Benvenuto Cellini, while Berlioz sang to them in his peculiarly monotonous style.  I also met the journalist, Jules Janin, who was quite a celebrity in Paris, although it took me a long time to realise this; the only thing that impressed me about him was his colloquial Parisian French, which was quite unintelligible to me.

A dinner, followed by a musical evening at the house of the celebrated pianoforte manufacturer, Erard, also remains in my memory.  At this house, as well as at a dinner-party given by Liszt at the Palais Royal, I again met his children.  Daniel, the youngest of them, particularly attracted me by his brightness and his striking resemblance to his father, but the girls were very shy.  I must not forget to mention an evening spent at the house of Mme. Kalergis, a woman of exceptional individuality, whom I met here for the first time since the early performance of Tannhauser in Dresden.  When at dinner she asked me a question about Louis Napoleon, I forgot myself so far in my excitement and resentment as to put an end to all further conversation by saying that I could not understand how anybody could possibly expect great things from a man whom no woman could really love.  After dinner, when Liszt sat down at the piano, young Marie Wittgenstein noticed that I had withdrawn silently and rather sadly from the rest of the company; this was due partly to my headache, and partly to the feeling of isolation that came over me in these surroundings.  I was touched by her sympathy and evident wish to divert me.

After a very fatiguing week my friends left Paris.  As I had again been prevented from starting on my work, I now decided not to leave Paris until I had restored my nerves to that state of calm which was indispensable to the fulfilment of my great project.  I had invited my wife to meet me on our way back to Zurich, to give her the opportunity of seeing Paris again, where we had both suffered so much.  After her arrival, Kietz and Anders turned up regularly for dinner, and a young Pole, the son of my old and beloved friend, Count Vincenz Tyszkiewicz, also came to see us very often.