Yet while he was enamored of the imaginative records of the Middle Ages, he had little interest, oddly enough, in their tangible remains.

He liked, for example, to summon a vision of the valley of the Rhone, with its slow-moving human streams flowing between Italy and the North, and with Sion still looking down from its heights, where the bishops had been lords rather than priests.

But this was for him a purely imaginative enchantment.

He cared little about exploring the actual and visible memorials of the past: to confront them as crumbling ruins gave him no pleasure, and, as he used to say, he "hated the smells." It was this instinct which, in his visits to the cathedrals, prompted him to stand as far back as 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.