possible while the Mass was being said. To see in the dim distance
the white, pontifical figures moving gravely through the ritual, to
hear the low tones, enthralled and stirred him; but he shrank from
entering the sacristy, with its loud-voiced priests describing
perfunctorily the relics: that was a disillusionment not to be borne
with.

[Illustration: A SKETCH OF LISZT BY MACDOWELL DRAWN IN 1883]

Having found that his labours at Darmstadt were telling upon his
health, MacDowell resigned his position there and returned to
Frankfort. Here he divided his time between his private teaching and
his composition. He was ambitious also to secure some profitable
concert engagements as a pianist. He had made occasional appearances
at orchestral concerts in Wiesbaden, Frankfort, Darmstadt, but these
had yielded him no return save an increase of reputation.

At Raff's instigation he visited Liszt at Weimar in the spring of
1882, armed with his first piano concerto (op. 15). This work he had
just composed under amusing circumstances. One day while he was
sitting aimlessly before his piano there came a knock at his door,
and in walked, to his startled confusion, his master, Raff, of whom
MacDowell stood in unmitigated awe. "The honor," he relates, "simply
overwhelmed me. He looked rather quizzically around at my untidy
room, and said something about the English translation of his
_Welt-Ende_ oratorio (I found out after, alas, that he had wanted me
to copy it in his score for him; but with his inexplicable shyness he
only hinted at it, and I on my side was too utterly and idiotically
overpowered to catch his meaning); then he abruptly asked me what I
had been writing. I, scarcely realising what I was saying, stammered