Henri Casadesus told me afterward that when Saint-Saëns arrived at the buffet he said: “I am thirsty.” “Here is some champagne,” said Casadesus. “No. That is too cold,” “Well, here is chocolate.” “No. That is too hot,” whereupon he took the glass of champagne and poured it into the chocolate and drank it down with evident relish. Pretty good for a man then eighty-two years of age! Saint-Saëns had always preserved a great adoration for Liszt, who had been one of the first musicians to befriend him in his early days, and his admiration for Liszt’s music had remained much greater than for that of Wagner. In fact, during the war the majority of the French musicians were furious at his chauvinistic attitude toward Wagner. It is told that when Saint-Saëns was still a very young man he was calling on Liszt and the servant asked him to wait a few minutes as Liszt was engaged in another room. Saint-Saëns, seeing a manuscript orchestral score on the piano, sat down and proceeded with his marvellous musicianship to read and play it at sight, when suddenly the door opened and Liszt and Wagner rushed in, amazed at hearing the intricate harmonies of Wagner’s “Rheingold” so marvellously reproduced. Wagner had just brought the score to Liszt in order to show it to him. During the winter of 1920-21 I accepted the co-editorship for a series of music readers to be used in our public schools, and as I had agreed to invite a small group of distinguished French and English composers to contribute some songs for this publication, I requested Saint-Saëns to honor us with two. He readily complied, and in the summer of 1921 invited me to come to his apartment as he had the songs all ready. When I called, he immediately sat down at the piano and from his very neatly written manuscript played them for me, begging me to observe that he had made the accompaniment exceedingly simple in order that “the American school-teachers should not be too much puzzled by it.” For one of the songs composed in honor of the aviators of the war, he had even written the words himself, and for the other he had taken words by La Fontaine. He called at my hotel in August of 1921. He seemed to me to have grown more feeble, but seeing on my piano an edition of Beethoven’s piano sonatas, edited by von Bülow, with which I always like to travel as I find the playing of these sonatas very agreeable and restful between the inevitable irritations of travel, Saint-Saëns suddenly bristled up and became very angry at a certain rather complicated fingering which Bülow had given to a piano passage, as his fingers had not been adapted by nature to rapid playing.