What are your travelling plans for this winter, Madame? Mine are quite unsettled. I did not succeed in leaving Spain, and the fact is that, being well, there is no sense in searching for better elsewhere.The only thing that provokes me is the necessity in which I am placed of having to give up the rest of my duties at Weymar for this winter. But I shall try to take a brilliant revenge in the course of this very year.
In spite of our agreement I have not sent you the bulletin of my peaceful victories in the arena of Madrid [Liszt gave concerts in the Teatro del Circo in Madrid from October till December 1844.](and elsewhere), because you know that there are certain things which are moreover very simple, but which I cannot do. More than once, nevertheless, I have regretted you in your founder's loge—the first in front—and I have turned to that side in expectancy of the inciting bravos which used to begin before all the others at the brilliant passages!
La Melinetti will doubtless have given you my ancient news from Pau! Poor woman, with her luxury of a husband (a superfluity which was not in the least a necessary thing for her), and her little impulsive ways,…she has really promised me to be at length reasonable, steady, and deliberate. I hope she will keep her word. With a little wit, behavior, and tact, she could make herself a very good position in Pau. Mme. d'Artigaux, [When unmarried, as Countess Caroline St. Criq, sixteen years before this time, she had possessed Liszt's whole heart, while hers belonged to him. But the command of her father, Minister St. Criq, separated eir ways, because he—was only an artist. Liszt thought of her in his last Will, but she left this world before him, at the beginning of the seventies.] who is the most ideally good woman I know, takes a real interest in her. Several other people sincerely wish her well—it only depends on herself to take a good position there—but unfortunately she is too outspoken, and inclined to play tricks.
What do you know of the elegaic and seraphic Chopin? I wrote a few lines from Pau to Mme. Sand, but my letter hardly asked for a reply, and she has, moreover, better things to do.
391. To Madame (?) in Milan
[Autograph in the Liszt-Museum in Weimar]
[1846]
I am at your feet, Madame, and kiss your hands—but it is impossible not to quarrel with you, and that seriously, over the last lines of your letter! Through what absence of mind, let me ask you, could you have written to me, "I do not speak to you of our affairs because I remember that your sympathies are not with us"? Frankly, if you were to tell me that I have never played any but false notes on the piano, and that my calling was that of a retail grocer, this opinion would offer, to my thinking, a greater degree of probability. Evidently, in my double character of citizen and musician, I am not even to exonerate myself from the fault you [ascribe] to me. Suffer me then not to dwell longer upon it, and deign for the future to spare me the pain which all suspicion of this kind would cause me.
Otherwise your letter was a great joy to me; first, as coming from you; and then, as announcing the realization of a wish, an idea, to the postponement of which I had resigned myself as well as I could, but which I had hardly relinquished. Your Sardanapalus comes in the nick of time, just as the 2000 francs will be opportune to the poet. The mode of payment is very simple. Belloni's sister being in Milan, she will have the honor of calling upon you, and an return for the restoration of the manuscript she will discharge the total of my debt, viz., two thousand francs. Allow me only a last request, which is that you will kindly take the trouble to read the whole libretto through again, and, if it should be expedient, to communicate to the poet direct any observations which you consider necessary. The notes and commentaries which you have added on the margin of Rotondi's libretto (which I keep very carefully) showed such a complete virtuosity in this style of subject that one could not possibly do better than submit with confidence to your decision.—[The plan of composing an opera "Sardanapalus" occupied Liszt for years.]
Thanks to God, and to this good star which has let me live many years pretty uprightly, "as if I were immortal," as you put it, behold me now since the end of September in last year entirely out of the circle of concerts—and it does not seem likely that I shall soon return to this drudgery.—I shall remain in Weymar till the 15th August; then I shall go and make a tour in the Crimea by way of the Danube, probably returning by Constantinople if I can manage it.—