Next, he announced that his reason for not granting his consent was that Schumann was a drunkard.  Robert found witnesses enough to be sponsors for his high respectability, but the accusation was a staggering blow in the midst of the deep melancholia into which the endless struggle and the recent death of Henrietta Voigt had plunged him.  Clara had the rare agony of seeing him weep.  It was now the turn of the strong Clara to break down, and only with the doctor’s aid she continued her concerts.  Her father’s effort to undermine her good name extended to the publication of a lithographed account of his side of the story.  But while certain old friends snubbed her, the lies that were told against her met their truest answer in the integrity of her whole career, and in the purity and honour of her life.  This her own father was the first and the last ever to slander.

It is noteworthy, in view of the lightness of so many of the love affairs of the musicians, such as the case of Liszt, who twice eloped with married women and discussed the formality of divorce afterward, that through the long and ardent and greatly tormented love story of the Schumanns there never appears a line in any of their multitudinous letters which shows or hints the faintest dream of any procedure but the most upright.  Always they encouraged each other with ringing beautiful changes on the one theme of their lives:  Be true to me as I am true to you.  Despair not.

The lawsuit dragged on and on.  Wieck exhausted all the devices of postponement in which the law is so fertile.  Schumann found himself the victim of a pamphlet of direct assault and downright libel, but all these things were only obstacles to exercise fidelity.  The lovers felt that no power on earth could cut them apart.  They began to dream of their marriage as more certain than the dawn.  Schumann writes to Clara—­“Mein Herzensbrautmaedchen”—­that he wishes her to study and prepare for his exclusive hearing a whole concert of music, the bride’s concert.  She responds that he too must prepare for her music of his own, for a bridegroom’s concert.  He writes and begs her to compose some music and dedicate it to him; he implores her not to ignore her genius.  She writes that she cannot find inspiration; that he is the family’s genius for original work.  Always they mingled music with love.

The composer Hiller gave a notable dinner to Liszt, who, after toasting Mendelssohn, toasted Schumann, “and spoke of me in such beautiful French and such tender words, that I turned blood-red.”  January 31, 1840, Schumann had taken up his plan to gain himself a doctor’s degree to match Clara’s titles.  He had asked a friend to appeal to the University of Jena to give him an honorary degree, or set him an examination to pass; for his qualifications he mentioned modestly: 

“My sphere of action as editor on a high-class paper, which has now existed for seven years; my position as composer and the fact of my having really worked hard, both as editor and musician.”