“My sole wish is—­I wish it every morning—­that I could sleep two years; could over-sleep all the thousand tears that shall yet flow.  Foolish wish!  I am sometimes such a silly child.  Do you remember that two years ago on Christmas Eve you gave me white pearls and mother said then:  ‘Pearls mean tears’?  She was right, they followed only too soon.”

Schumann busied himself in so many ways that again for a little while he somewhat melted Wieck’s wrath, and Clara hoped that some day he could again be received at home as a friend.  She was made the court pianist at this time, and it was a quaint whimsy of fate that, in connection with the award, Schumann was asked to give her father a “character.”  It need hardly be said that he gave him extra measure of praise.

Clara’s new dignity stirred Schumann to hunt some honour for himself.  Robert decided, that while he was content “to die an artist, it would please a certain girl to see ‘Dr.’ before his name.”  He was willing to become either a doctor of philosophy or of music.  He began at once to set both of these schemes to work.

Now old Wieck returned to his congenial state of wrath.  He declared that Clara was far too extravagant ever to live on Schumann’s earnings, though she insisted that Schumann was assured of one thousand thalers a year, and she could earn an equal sum with one concert a winter in Dresden, where prices were so high.  But just then the prosperity of Schumann’s paper began to slough off.  It occurred to the lovers that they would prefer to live in Vienna, and that the Zeitschrift could prosper there.  There were endless difficulties, a censorship to pacify, and many commercial schemes to arrange, but nothing must be left untried.  The scheme was put under way.  Meanwhile, as usual, the Wiecks were trying on their part; to separate the lovers.  Schumann was accused of infidelity to her, and he admitted that a Mrs. Laidlaw seemed to be in love with him, but not he with her.  They attacked his character, and accused him of being too fond of Bavarian beer.  On this charge, he answered with dignity: 

“Pooh!—­I should not be worth being spoken to, if a man trusted by so good and noble a girl as you, should not be a respectable man and not control himself in everything.  Let this simple word put you at ease for ever.”

Failing here, Wieck presented another candidate for Clara’s heart, a Doctor D——­, who met the same fate as Banck.  There were further hopes that she would find some one in Paris or London, whither she was bound; but she wrote Schumann that if the whole aristocracy of both places fell at her feet, she would let them lie there and turn to the simple artist, the dear, noble man, and lay her heart at his feet. ("Alle Lords von London und alle Cavaliere von Paris, koennten mir zu Fuessen liegen,” etc.) Clara was also tormented by the persistent suit of Louis Rackerman, of Bremen, who could not see how vain was his quest.