Here he worked like a fiend at his theory and practice.  He suffered from occasional attacks of the most violent melancholy, obsessions of inky gloom, which kept returning upon him at long intervals.  But when he threw off the spell, he was himself again, and could write to his mother of still new amours: 

“I have filled my cup to the brim by falling in love the day before yesterday.  The gods grant that my ideal may have a fortune of 50,000.”

In 1830 he flirted with the beautiful Anita Abegg; her name suggested to him a theme for his Opus I, published in 1831, and based upon the notes A-B-E-G-G.  He apologised to his family for not dedicating his first work to them, but explained that it was not good enough.  It is published with an inscription to “Pauline, Comtesse d’Abegg,” a disguise which puzzled his family, until he explained that he himself was the “father” of the “Countess” d’Abegg.

It was two years before he confessed another flirtation.  In 1833, he went to Frankfort to hear Paganini, and there it was a case of “pretty girl at the willow-bush—­staring match through opera-glasses—­champagne.”  The next year he was torn between two admirations.  One, the daughter of the German-born American consul at Liepzig,—­her name was Emily List; she was sixteen, and he described her “as a thoroughly English girl, with black sparkling eyes, black hair, and firm step; and full of intellect, and dignity, and life.”

The other was Ernestine von Fricken, daughter—­by adoption, though this he did not know—­of a rich Bohemian baron.  Of her he wrote: 

“She has a delightfully pure, child-like mind, is delicate and thoughtful, deeply attached to me and everything artistic, and uncommonly musical—­in short just such a one as I might wish to have for a wife; and I will whisper it in your ear, my good mother, if the Future were to ask me whom I should choose, I would answer unhesitatingly, ‘This one,’ But that is all in the dim distance; and even now I renounce the prospect of a more intimate relationship, although, I dare say, I should find it easy enough.”

Ernestine, like Robert, was a pupil and boarder at the home of the Wiecks.  She and Robert had acted as godparents to one of Wieck’s children, possibly Clara’s half-sister, Marie, also in later years a prominent pianist and teacher.

The affair with Ernestine grew more serious.  In 1834 he wrote a letter of somewhat formal and timid devotion to her.  A little later, with fine diplomacy, he also wrote a fatherly letter to her supposed father, praising some of the baron’s compositions with certain reservations, and adding, as a coup de grace, the statement that he himself was writing some variations on a theme of the baron’s own.

The same month Ernestine and Robert became engaged.  He was deeply, joyously fond of her, and he poured out his soul to her friend, who was also a distinguished musician, Henrietta Voigt.  To her he wrote of Ernestine: