We sometimes had informal music in my little blue salon. Baron de Zuylen, Dutch minister, was an excellent musician, also Comte de Beust, the Austrian ambassador. He was a composer. I remember his playing me one day a wedding march he had composed for the marriage of one of the archdukes. It was very descriptive, with bells, cannon, hurrahs, and a nuptial hymn--rather difficult to render on a piano--but there was a certain amount of imagination in the composition. The two came often with me to the Conservatoire. Comte de Beust brought Liszt to me one day. I wanted so much to see that complex character, made up of enthusiasms of all kinds, patriotic, religious, musical. He was dressed in the ordinary black priestly garb, looked like an ascetic with pale, thin face, which lighted up very much when discussing any subject that interested him. He didn't say a word about music, either then or on a subsequent occasion when I lunched with him at the house of a great friend and admirer, who was a beautiful musician. I hoped he would play after luncheon. He was a very old man, and played rarely in those days, but one would have liked to hear him. Madame M. thought he would perhaps for her, if the party were not too large, and the guests "sympathetic" to him. I have heard so many artists say it made all the difference to them when they felt the public was with them--if there were one unsympathetic or criticising face in the mass of people, it was the only face they could distinguish, and it affected them very much. The piano was engagingly open and music littered about, but he apparently didn't see it. He talked politics, and a good deal about pictures with some artists who were present. [Illustration: Franz Liszt.]