tered, the song
they sang, or the work they did. Such a sacred person to me is the
gifted woman who first interpreted for me Schumann's Albums. Many years
ago it was, as she told me, that she one day stood unperceived in the
half-open door of her master, near the lesson-hour, and heard him softly
rendering a theme which stole far into places of her heart, which had
been awaiting its spell unconsciously. Presently he felt that there was
a listener, and, hastily brushing away a tear, he placed the music in a
far corner of the room, away from his _repertoire_. She confessed, that,
afterward, when he was not present, she had looked on that which he
evidently desired to conceal; she saw written, in pencil, upon it,
"Sternenkranz." Thenceforth shops and catalogues were ransacked, but no
"Sternenkranz" was found,--the word was evidently her master's own
fancy; so she summoned all her heroism, one day, when Herr Otto
complained of her indifference to the pieces he set before her, and
informed him that she should perish at his feet, unless he would give
her "Sternenkranz." Of course her guilt was manifest, and Herr Otto, in
a spasm of anger at "prying women," as he called them, brought out the
treasure, and with it others of a very rare album of Schumann's, to
which he had given no names, leaving them to whisper their own names to
each soul that could receive them: Star-Wreath it might be to one, Bower
of Lilies to another. It was the same as with that white stone which the
Seer of Patmos saw,--within it "a name written which no man knoweth,
saving he that receiveth it."

This piece was to the lady a touch of consecration. Thenceforth she was
known among us as "the Schumannite woman." I verily believe that to-day,
next to the divine Clara herself, she is the best interpreter of Robert
Schumann's works living; and if the love she has obtained for him is not
as universal, it is just as fervent. Many silent and holy hours have I
sat communing, through her, with him whom the Germans love to call their
Tone-Poet; and the music remained to clothe with the full vesture of
romance the meagre paragraphs of the journals which hinted his love, his
sorrow, and at length his insanity and death. More, however, I longed to
know of him,--of the wedlock of these Brownings of music; and more I
came to know, in the way which, with this preface, I now proceed to
relate.

A bitter December evening found me tumbling through snow and ice to
accommod