"When in 1882, Fauré met Lizst again in Zürich, he submitted to him the manuscript of the Ballade which he had just written. "I was rather afraid that it might be too long, " Fauré told me, "and I said this to Liszt, who gave me the marvelous reply: 'Too long, young man, has no meaning. One writes as one thinks.'" The composer of Mazeppa was certainly not the man to be surprised by lengthy developments."