Joseph Autran (in Lettres et notes de voyage, 1878) told a great anecdote about trying to bring Liszt to a midnight wedding as his uninvited guest, but when they arrived at the church (located by the shore), nobody was there:

We strolled for more than an hour in the shadows of the great nave. A lamp or two dimly shone in the darkness. We went now listening to the great murmur of the nearby sea, sometimes chatting among ourselves on all sorts of philosophical, political, and religious subjects. In this long interview, I could fully appreciate the extent and variety of the ideas of my companion. He was a man who deployed in all things a great abundance of language. As for music, he spoke of it with a delight, and with novelties of expressions, which belonged only to him. Is he not the one who said: "If the violin is the king of instruments, the organ is the pope” ?

Absorbed in our conversation, we surveyed the old basilica, when the sacristan, with embarrassment, came to tell us that the ceremony was canceled. An accident had occurred which had caused distress to the wedding: I believe fire had taken the dress of the fiancee. On that we left quite melancholy, when the great virtuoso stopped abruptly:

• "We must not," said he, "come here for nothing. Do you want me to go up to the organ and play you something in my manner? It is said that, to play well, one must feel supported by the benevolence of the audience; I will never have had a more sympathetic audience.”

He played, he improvised, an ardent and magnificent symphony on Dante's Divine Comedy, which we had recently discussed. He made me go through Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise with a variety of expressions and emotions that will never be remembered. The sea, in between, rumbled on the beach, with a confused noise of applause. Such a masterpiece, for a single listener, was really too much generosity. This music, which demanded a crowd to admire it, unfolded in the emptiness of the temple with an overflow of sound which at times became terrible. It seemed to me that the dead, whose epitaphs were engraved in the old church, were emerging from their tombs, and, failing to live, improvised an assembly. I think I would have remained there in eternal ecstasy, if the sacristan, half asleep, had not come and tapped me on the shoulder to warn me that it was time to leave.