132 To Anton Rubinstein
Your fugue of this morning, my dear Rubinstein, is very little to my taste, and I much prefer to it the Preludes that you wrote at an earlier date in this same room, which, to my great surprise, I found empty when I came to fetch you for the Berlioz rehearsal. Is it a fact that this music works on your nerves? And, after the specimen you had of it the other time at the Court, did the resolution to hear more of it seem to you too hard to take? Or have you taken amiss some words I said to you, which, I give you my word, were nothing but a purely friendly proceeding on my part? Whatever it may be, I don’t want any explanations in writing, and only send you these few lines to intimate that your nocturnal flight was not a very agreeable surprise to me, and that you would have done better in every way to hear the “Fuite en Egypte” and the “Fantaisie sur la Tempete” of Shakespeare.
Send me tidings of yourself from Vienna (if not sooner), and, whatever rinforzando of “murrendo” may happen, please don’t do a wrong to the sentiments of sincere esteem and cordial friendship invariably maintained towards you by
F. Liszt
Weymar, February 21st, 1855.