The woes of the two lovers were as different as possible, though equally balanced; and the honourableness of their undertaking was equally high.

Clara was torn betwixt filial piety toward a father who could be ursine to a miserable degree, and a lover who was not only eating his heart out in loneliness, but who needed her personality to complete his creative powers in music.  While Schumann had no such problem to meet, he lacked Clara’s elastic and buoyant nature, and it must never be forgotten that when he was sad, he was dismal to the point of absolute madness.  He would sit for hours in the company of hilarious tavern-friends, and speak never a word.

Clara at length gave up her attempt to keep from writing to Schumann, in the face of her father’s actions; for in spite of the promises he had given them, he could break out in such speeches as this:  “If Clara marries Schumann, I will say it even on my death-bed, she is not worthy of being my daughter.”

Now began that clandestine correspondence which seems to have implicated and inculpated half the musicians of Europe.  There were almost numberless go-betweens who carried letters for the lovers, or received them in different towns.  There were zealous messengers ranging from the Russian Prince Reuss-Koestriz, through all grades of society, down to the devoted housemaid “Nanny.”  Chopin, and Mendelssohn, and many another musician, were touched by the fidelity of the lovers, and Liszt in one of his letters describes how he had broken off acquaintance with his old friend Wieck, because of indignation at his treatment of Schumann and Clara.

Schumann’s works were now beginning to attract a little attention, though not much, and even Clara was impelled to beg him to write her something more in the concert style that the public would understand.  But while the musician Schumann was not arriving at understanding, the critic Schumann was already famous for the swiftness of his discoveries and the bravery of his proclamations of genius.  As for Clara, though already in her eighteenth year, she was one of the most famous pianists in the world, and favourably compared, in many respects, especially in point of poetical interpretation, with Liszt, Thalberg, Chopin, and Europe’s brilliantest virtuosos.  But Schumann had delighted her heart by writing:  “I love you not because you are a great artist; no, I love you because you are so good.”  That praise, she wrote him, had rejoiced her infinitely, and that praise any one who knows her life can echo with Schumann.

Such fame the love-affair of the Schumanns had gained that to the musical world it was like following a serial romance in instalments.  Doctor Weber in Trieste offered to give Schumann ten thousand thalers—­an offer which could not of course be accepted.  At Easter, 1838, Schumann received one thousand thalers (about $760) from his brothers Eduard and Carl.

But the lovers had agreed to wait two years—­until Easter, 1840, before they should marry—­and the two years were long and wearisome in the prospect and in the endurance.  As Clara wrote: