On the 1st of August the case reached a stage where the father had but ten days more to make his final appeal.  Worn out and lacking in further weapons of any kind, he let the occasion pass, and rested on the decision of the court.  Clara went for one last concert tour as Clara Wieck.

On the 12th of August, the super-deliberate court handed down its awesome verdict.  It was a verdict of reward for the lovers.  Since Wieck had withdrawn his evidence, the verdict was strongly worded in favour of the lovers.  Schumann wrote Clara, “On this day, Clara, three years ago, I proposed for your hand.”

There was no delay in crying the banns, and the lovers went about as in a dream of rapture.

On September the 12th, between ten and eleven o’clock of a Saturday, at Schoenefeld, a village near Leipzig, they were married by an old school friend of Schumann’s.  On the 13th, a Sunday, and Clara’s birthday—­her twenty-first—­she was the wife of the man who had for four years made her possession his chief ambition, and who had loved her better than he knew, long years before that.

Thus the lovers gained only one day by their lawsuit, for Clara was now of age.  But who could estimate the value of the struggle in strengthening and deepening their love for each other and their worthiness for each other?  It is the struggle for existence and the battle with resistance that bring about the evolution of strength in the physical world, and in the mental.  Can we not say the same of the sentimental?

Would it not be a great pity if there were never such a gymnasium as parental resistance for lovers to exercise their hearts in?  Shall we not, then, thank old Wieck for his fine lessons in psychical culture?  His daughter Marie, by the way, Clara’s half-sister, has only this year (1903) published a defence of the old man in answer to the first volume of Litzmann’s new biography.

On Clara’s marriage-day she wrote in her diary a little triumph song of joy.  The wedding had been very simple and—­

“There was a little dancing.  Though no hilarity reigned, still in every face there was an inner content; it was a beautiful day, and the sun himself, who had been hidden for many days, poured his mild beams upon us in the morning as we went to the wedding, as if he would bless our union.  There was nothing disturbing on this day, and so let it be inscribed in this book as the most beautiful and the most important day of my life.  A period in my existence has now closed.  I have endured very many sorrows in my young years, but also many joys which I shall never forget.  Now begins a new life, a beautiful life, that life which one loves more than anything, even than self; but heavy responsibilities also rest upon me, and Heaven grant me strength to fulfil them truly and as a good wife.  Heaven has always stood by me and will not cease now.  I have always had a great belief in God, and shall always keep it.”