"'Ah! the town gossip of Ratibor has your ear, too, I see!' Lichnowsky said, with a scornful smile. 'But of course we are not going to quarrel.'"
Caroline Bauer also relates in her Mémoires the following anecdote about Liszt and the haughty Princess Metternich:
"Liszt had been introduced to the princess and paid her a visit in Vienna. He was received and ushered into the drawing-room, in which the princess was holding a lively conversation with another lady. A condescending nod of the head was responded to the bow of the world-renowned artist; a gracious movement of the head invited him to be seated. In vain the proud and spoiled man waited to be introduced to the visitor, and to have an opportunity of joining in the conversation. The princess quietly continued to converse with the lady as if Franz Liszt were not in existence at all, at least not in her salon. At last she asked him in a cool and off-hand manner:
"'Did you do a good stroke of business at the concert you gave in Italy?'
"'Princess,' he replied coldly, 'I am a musician, and not a man of business.'
"The artist bowed stiffly and instantly left.
"Soon after this Prince Metternich proved himself to be as perfect a gentleman as he was a diplomatist. At Liszt's first concert in Vienna he went to him and, entering the artist's room, cordially pressed his hands before everybody, and, with a gracious smile, said softly:
"'I trust you will pardon my wife for a slip of the tongue the other day; you know what women are!'"
FANNY KEMBLE
Mrs. Kemble, in her chatty book, Records of Later Life, relates a pleasant incident in September, 1842: