Now, however, it had for Liszt something of unfreshness and monotony. He determined to break loose, and in the spring of 1835 told the comtesse that he was going to leave her. She, however, would not consent. He yielding as gracefully as he could, took a lodging in a quiet part of the city, where his life consisted of music, literature, and the comtesse, who visited him incessantly. Her love had quite infatuated her, to take the tone of the time; nowadays we might say that she found it so serious that she desired to make it honest. The means she hit upon were such as might strike a foolish woman as an inspiration. Believing that the long way round was the short way home, she thought to atone for her past foibles by casting them into sudden insignificance--to clear the sultry air by a thunder crash. When Liszt heard that the comtesse planned to leave her husband, and even her children, and go into foreign exile with him, he felt that the comtesse was taking the bit into her teeth with a vengeance, but saw as he would on the lines, and cry "whoa" as he would, the runaway comtesse still insisted on running away. Liszt called on her mother to interfere; she was run over. He appealed to her former confessor; his staying hand was shaken loose. He called on the venerable family notary; the old man was upset by the roadside--as I shall be also if I do not release this runaway metaphor. The comtesse's mother persuaded the daughter to leave Paris for Basle, hoping that a change of scene would bring a change of mind; Liszt followed. It seems to me, however, more probable that the mother, learning that her daughter was determined to leave Paris with Liszt, went with her in the desperate effort to save appearances. But, however that may be, we find the comtesse and the mother at one hotel, and Liszt at another. A few days later, Liszt returned to his hotel to find his room choked with the comtesse' trunks, and to learn that the mother had gone back to Paris in despair. The comtesse had, as they say, "brought her knitting" and come to stay. Paris is not easily excited over an intrigue conducted according to the established codes by which the intriguers bury their heads in the sand, as a form of pretence that nobody knows that they are billing and cooing beneath the sand, though of course everybody knows it, and they know that everybody knows it, except possibly the one other person most interested. But Paris was dumbfounded that a very prominent and beautiful comtesse should leave her husband and her children in broad daylight, and go visiting the most famous pianist in the world. The pianist was to blame, of course, in the public eye, and the whole affair was branded as a flagrant case of abduction. But, as we know now, it was the pianist who was the victim of this Sabine procedure.