Your very devoted friend,
F. Liszt
Rome, December 4th, 1881
I remain here till the first week in January at Via and Hotel
Alibert.
285. To Camille Saint-Saens
Much-Esteemed Dear Friend,
You are not one of those who are easily forgotten, and you have won your fame valiantly. My feelings of sincere admiration and gratitude have followed you for many years; they are confirmed and increased by the proofs you give of constant and active sympathy.
I wrote to you last summer from Magdeburg on the occasion of the festival. Your remarkable work "La Lyre et la Harpe" figured on the programme; a delay in the translation and in the study of the choruses obliged me, to my great regret, to defer the performance of it till next summer, when the Tonkunstler-Versammlung, which is honored by your active membership and has just named me its Honorary President, will again meet.
Before Christmas Furstner, the publisher, will send you, from me, three copies (score and arrangements for pianoforte solo and duet) of my second Mephistopheles Waltz, dedicated to Camille Saint-Saens. I thank you cordially for giving it so hearty a welcome. No one more than myself feels the disproportion in my compositions between the good-will and the effective result. Yet I go on writing—not without fatigue—from inner necessity and old habit. We are not forbidden to aspire towards higher things: it is the attainment of our end which remains the note of interrogation, being in this something like the end to the Mephistopheles Waltz on b, f—
[Here, Liszt illustrates with a musical score excerpt]