"If any one had told me as I stood there innocently, and learned from the factotum that there were such things as piano concertos by Beethoven, that I should ever write six volumes in German and two in French on Beethoven! I had heard of a septet, but the musician who wrote that was called J. N. Hummel.
"From the bill on the boulevards I concluded, however, that anyone who could play a concerto of Beethoven in public must be a very wonderful fellow, and of quite a different breed from Kalkbrenner, the composer of the fantasia, Effusio Musica. That this Effusio was mere rubbish I already understood, young and heedless though I was.
"In this way, on the then faithful boulevards of Paris, I met for the first time in my life the name of Liszt, which was to fill the world. This bill of the concert was destined to exert an important influence on my life. I can still see, after so many years, the colours of the important paper—thick monster letters on a yellow ground—the fashionable colour at the time in Paris. I went straight to Schlesinger's, then the musical exchange of Paris, Rue Richelieu.
"'Where does Mr. Liszt live?' I asked, and pronounced it Litz, for the Parisians have never got any further with the name of Liszt than Litz.
"The address of Liszt was Rue Montholon; they gave it me at Schlesinger's without hesitation. But when I asked the price of Litz, and expressed my wish to take lessons from him, they all laughed at me, and the shopmen behind the counters tittered, and all said at once, 'He never gives a lesson; he is no professor of the piano!'
"I felt that I must have asked something very foolish. But the answer, no professor of the piano, pleased me nevertheless, and I went straightway to the Rue Montholon.
"Liszt was at home. That was a great rarity, said his mother, an excellent woman with a true German heart, who pleased me very much; her Franz was almost always in church, and no longer occupied himself with music at all. Those were the days when Liszt wished to become a Saint-Simonist. It was a great time, and Paris the centre of the world. There lived Rossini and Cherubini, also Auber, Halévy, Berlioz and the great violinist, Baillot; the poet, Victor Hugo, had lately published his Orientales, and Lamartine was recovering from the exertion of his Méditations Poétiques. Georges Sand was not yet fairly discovered; Chopin not yet in Paris. Marie Taglioni danced tragedies at the Grand Opéra; Habeneck, a German conductor, directed the picked orchestra of the Conservatoire, where the Parisians, a year after Beethoven's death, for the first time heard something of him. Malibran and Sontag sang at the Italian Opéra the Tournament duet in Tancredi. It was in the winter of 1828-9 Baillot played quartets; Rossini gave his Guillaume Tell in the spring.
"In Liszt I found a thin, pale-looking young man, with infinitively attractive features. He was lounging, deep in thought, lost in himself on a broad sofa, and smoking a long Turkish pipe, with three pianos standing around him. He made not the slightest movement on my entrance, but rather appeared not to notice me at all. When I explained to him that my family had directed me to Kalkbrenner, but I came to him because he wished to play a concerto by Beethoven in public, he seemed to smile. But it was only as the glitter of a dagger in the sun.
"'Play me something,' he said, with indescribable satire, which, however, had nothing to wound in it, just as no harm is done by summer lightning.
"'I play the sonata for the left hand (pour la main gauche principale), by Kalkbrenner,' I said, and thought I had said something correct.