Only by a happy chance can I reckon myself amongst the few who have lately heard LISZT play. I happened to be staying in Rome, and LISZT kindly invited me over to the Villa d'Este twice. There at Tivoli, alone with him, he conversed with me of the times long gone by of MENDELSSOHN, of PAGANINI, of CHOPIN. There in the warm light of an Italian autumn, subdued by the dark-red curtains that hung in his study, with an old-world silence around us, he sat at his piano once more; and as he played to me the clock of time went back, and CHOPIN entered with his pale refined face, his slight aristo- cratic figure: HEINE sat restlessly in a dark corner; 39 610 LISZT. MADAME SAND reclined in the deep window-niche overlooking the desolate Campagna, with Rome in the distance; DE LAMMENAIS stood at the foot of the piano a delicate, yet sinewy and mobile frame with his noble eager face all aglow, his eloquent tongue silent, listening to the inspiration of another believer in another evangelium the evangeliura of the emotions, the Gospel of Art. Shadows all of you, yet to me for an hour, in the deep solitude of the great Cardinal's palace alone with LISZT, more real than the men and women of our lesser day.