A choral society of amateurs had been formed in Paris under his direction, most of the members belonging to the highest aristocracy. At the rehearsals Princess Belgiojoso, an accomplished musician, accompanied on the piano. As an accompanist she had, however, serious faults, for she took great liberties with the time, treating what she had to play as if it had been a ' Nocturne ' or ' Ballade ' by Chopin, her admired master. During one of these rehearsals, at which I was present by invitation, a young German tenor, not perfectly at home in the French tongue, complained of these liberties by muttering in a low voice at first, but which grew louder and louder : ' II n'y a pas de tact, il n'y a pas de tact', evidently under the impression that the German word for tact had the same meaning in French. After a while Liszt corrected him by saying: 'Monsieur, Madame la Princesse manque de mesure, mais vous manquez de tact.' << less