“There is nothing in this, believe me; he will throw you to the first comer who has gold and title enough.  His highest ambition then is concert giving and travelling.  Further than that he lets your heart bleed, destroys my strength in the midst of my ambition to do beautiful things in the world.  Besides he laughs at all your tears....  Ah! how my head swims.  I could laugh at death’s own agony!”

His only hope was now her steadfastness.  Her message promised him that, and warned him also to be true, or else “you will have broken a heart that loves but once.”

It is only now, strange to say, that they began to use the “Du,” that second person singular of intimacy which all languages keep except the English, which has banished its “thee and thou” to cold and formal usages.

It was typical of Clara’s attitude throughout this whole long struggle that she was always as true to her father’s wishes as could humanly be expected.  She obeyed him always, until he became unreasonable and a tyrant beyond even the endurance of a German daughter.  So now, though Robert begged her to write him secretly, she refused with tears.  But, fortunately for them both, she did not long remain in the town where they were separated like prisoners in neighbouring cells.  She could soon write him from other cities.  As for Schumann, he determined to make the most of the new hope, and to establish himself socially and financially in a position which Wieck could not assail.

Gradually, with that same justice which made him able to criticise appreciatively the music of men who wrote in another style than his, he was able to feel an understanding for the position of even his tormentor Wieck.

“Now we have only to obtain the affection and confidence of your father, to whom I should so love to give that name, to whom I owe so many of the joys of my life, so much good advice, and some sorrow as well—­and whom I should like to make so happy in his old days, that he might say:  ‘What good children!’ If he understood me better he would have saved me many worries and would never have written me a letter which made me two years older.  Well, it is all over and forgiven now; he is your father, and has brought you up to be everything that is noble; he would like to weigh your future happiness as in a pair of scales, and wishes to see you just as happy and well-protected as you have always been under his fatherly care.  I cannot argue with him.”

Schumann works with new fury at his compositions, and plans ever larger and larger works; but through all his music there reigns the influence of Clara in a way unequalled, or at least never equally confessed by any other musician.  He writes her that the Davidsbuendlertaenze were written in happiness and are full of “bridal thoughts, suggested by the most delicious excitement that I have ever remembered.”  Of his “Ende vom Lied” he says: 

“When I was composing it, I must confess that I thought:  ’Well, the end of it all will be a jolly wedding,’ but towards the end, my sorrow about you came over me again, so that wedding and funeral bells are ringing together.”