The Abbé Liszt, who was the guest of Cardinal Hohenlohe at the Villa D’Este, was much in evidence that winter and from time to time consented to play at some benefit concert. He was a commanding figure as he sat at the piano, very elegant in his clerical dress, playing his “Rhapsodic Hongroise” as I have never heard it played. After the concert a group of ladies surrounded him. The Abbé dropped a glove; a young Neapolitan princess picked it up and hid it in her muff. “The ladies cost the Abbé a pretty penny in gloves,” whispered Crawford. At this time Crawford was called Frank, or sometimes Fritz, a nickname given him in Germany, either at Heidelberg or at Lesnian, the home of his Junker brother-in-law, Eric von Rabé, an officer of the Franco-Prussian War. Crawford was twenty-four years old, a tall, strong, handsome young man, with no serious pursuit save the study of languages. He had plenty of time to devote to my mother and me; to him I owe my introduction to medieval and ancient Rome, with much else that has proved useful. In a letter of this time he writes to me: “No success worth having is got from the uncultivated efforts of genius, and cultivation means the tritest of trite things, the daily digging and hoeing of the mind till it brings forth wheat instead of tares!” King Victor Emmanuel might be seen on a fine afternoon, driving a smart pair of horses in a high phaeton. He was a martial figure, full of dash, with a keen eye that saw more than most. His fierce mustache, twirled at a truculent angle, set the fashion for the military. We sometimes met him driving to the Villa Mirafiori, the home of his morganatic wife, often with a younger man who closely resembled him and was, I think, a son of this union. Rome was a city divided against itself; the King’s party were called the Whites, the followers of the Pope Pius Ninth were known as the Blacks. The two factions managed to rub along together somehow, as they have done ever since, though the King’s people talked of “the traitor at the hearthstone” and the Pope’s cursed “Perfidious Savoy.” Francesco Crispi, Minister of the Interior, at that time played the first rôle in Italian politics. He had lately returned from a certain quiet journey whose results were to prove of vast importance to the whole world. With the object of sounding the great powers’ attitude towards Italy, Crispi visited England, France, Austria, and Germany. In Paris he was coolly received, London was friendly but indifferent, Vienna as hostile as ever; he returned to Italy feeling that Bismarck--and Bismarck then meant Germany--was Italy’s only friend. From this hour the Triple Alliance between Germany and those two irreconcilables, Italy and Austria, was assured.