By November such an estrangement had come between the lovers that he could write his sister-in-law: 

“Clara loves me as dearly as ever, but I am resigned.  I am often at the Voigts.”

Since February of the year 1836, they had not spoken or exchanged any letters.  He never heard her beloved music, except at two concerts, or when at night he would stand outside of her house and listen in secret loneliness.  In May he dedicated to her his Sonata in F Sharp Minor.  It was, as he expressed it:  “One long cry of my heart for you, in which a theme of yours appears in all possible forms.”  His Opus 6, dated the same year, was his wonderfully emotional group, “The Davidsbuendlertaenze.”  The opening number is based upon a theme by Clara Wieck, and in certain of the chords written in syncopation, I always feel that I hear him calling aloud, “Clara!  Clara!”

His hope that this musical appeal might bring her to him was in vain, and he began to doubt her faith.  He passed through one of those terrific crises of melancholia which at long intervals threatened his reason.  On the eve of the New Year, he wrote to his sister-in-law: 

“Oh, continue to love me—­sometimes I am seized with mortal anguish, and then I have no one but you who really seem to hold me in your arms and to protect me.  Farewell.”

To Clara, at a later time, he described this trial of his hope: 

“I had given up and then the old anguish broke out anew—­then I wrung my hands—­then I often prayed at night to God:  ’Only let me live through this one torment without going mad.’  I thought once to find your engagement announced in the paper—­that bowed my neck to the dust till I cried aloud.  Then I wished to heal myself by forcing myself to love a woman who already had me half in her net.”

Love by act of Parliament, or by individual resolve, has never been accomplished; and Schumann’s efforts were foredoomed.  In the meanwhile, the Wiecks tried the same treatment upon Clara, whose singing-teacher, Carl Banck, had been deceived by her friendship into thinking that he could persuade her to love him.  His ambition suited eminently the family politics of Father Wieck.  He made his first mistake by slandering Schumann, not knowing the A B C of a woman’s heart.  For a lover slandered is twice recommended.  As Clara wrote later:  “I was astounded at his black heart.  He wanted to betray you, and he only insulted me.”

One of the attempts to undermine Schumann was the effort to poison Clara’s mind against him; because when a piano Concerto of hers was played (Opus 7), Schumann did not review it in his paper, but left it to a friend of his named Becker.  In the next number Schumann wrote an enthusiastic criticism upon a Concerto by Sterndale Bennett.  The attempt failed, however, and Schumann’s letter is in existence in which he had asked Becker to review the Concerto, because, in view of the publicity given to the estrangement with the Wiecks, praise from him would be in poor taste.