“The head of the table was occupied by a lively, flexible man of middle age, intellectual in conversation, and overflowing with sharp and witty remarks.  He was the instructor of more than one of the young musicians around him, who all listened to his observations with profound attention.  He was very fond of monopolizing the conversation and suffering himself to be admired.  For he called many a young, highly promising musician his pupil, and had, besides, the certain consciousness of having moulded his daughter Clara, at that time a girl of fourteen, into a prodigy, whose first appearance delighted the whole world, and whose subsequent artist-activity became the pride of her native city, Leipsic.  By his side sat a quiet, thoughtful young man of twenty-three, with melancholy eyes.  But lately a student in Heidelberg, he had now devoted himself entirely to music, had removed to Leipsic and was now a pupil of the ‘old schoolmaster,’ as the father of Clara Wieck liked to be called.  Young Robert Schumann had good reason to be melancholy.  After long struggles, he had only been able to devote himself entirely to music comparatively late in life, and had been obliged to pass a part of his precious youth in studies which were as uncongenial as possible to his artist-spirit.  He had finally decided for the career of a virtuoso, and was pursuing the study of the piano with an almost morbid zeal, when the disabling of one of his fingers, a consequence of his over-exertions, obliged him to give up this career forever.  He did not yet suspect that this accident would prove fortunate for him in the end, by directing him to his true vocation, composition.  Perhaps, too, it was the first germ of love, in the garb of admiration for the wondrous talent of Clara, which made young Robert so quiet and dreamy.  His companions were all the more lively.  There sat the eccentric Louis Boehner,[A] who long ago had served as the model for E.T.A.  Hoffmann’s fantastic pictures.  Here J.P.  Lyser, a painter by profession, but a poet as well, and a musician besides.  Here Carl Bauck, the indefatigable, yet unsuccessful composer of songs,—­now, in his capacity of critic, the paper bugbear of the Dresden artists.  He had just returned from Italy, and believed himself in possession of the true secret of the art of singing, the monopoly of which every singing-master is wont to claim for himself.  C.F.  Becker, too, the eminent organist and industrious collector, belonged to this circle, as well as many more young and old artists of more or less merit and talent."[B]

[Footnote A:  The “Florestan” of the “Scenes Mignonnes”; “Chiara” is Clara herself; “Eusebius” was Robert Schumann.]

[Footnote B:  See Dwight’s Journal of Music, Vol.  VIII.  No. 3.]

Florestan then stood before me; and with him, although invisible, stood that sacred circle, which had unconsciously borne within it the germs of so many future sorrows and glories.