n who get good people into trouble, and bad folks out;
and as for himself he had decided to cut the business and fling himself
into the arms of the Muse.

This letter brought his mother down upon him with tears and pleadings
that he would not fail to redeem the Schumanns by becoming a Great Man.
Poetry was foolishness and all musicians were poor--there were a hundred
of them in Zwickau who lived on rye-bread and wienerwurst.

The boy promised and the mother went home pacified. But not many weeks
had passed before Robert set out on a pilgrimage to Bayreuth, to visit
the scene of Jean Paul's romances. On this same tour he went to Munich,
and there met Heinrich Heine, who was from that day to enter into his
heart and jostle Jean Paul for first place. He was accompanied on this
memorable trip by Gisbert Rosen, who proved his lifelong friend and
confidant. Very naturally Leipzig was the ardently desired goal of his
wanderings. At once on arriving there, he sought out the home of
Professor and Madame Carus. That his greeting (and mayhap hers) did not
contain all the warmth the boy lover had anticipated is shown in a
letter to Rosen, wherein he says: "This world is only a huge graveyard
of buried dreams, a garden of cypress and weeping willows, a silent
peep-show with tearful puppets. Alas for our high faith--I wonder if
Jean Paul wasn't right when he said that love lessens woman's delicacy,
and time and distance dissipate it like morning dew?"

Yet Madame Carus was kind, for Robert played at little informal concerts
at her house, and she urged him to abandon law for music; and he refers
the matter to Rosen, asking Rosen's advice and explaining how he wants
to be advised, just as we usually do. Rosen tells him that no man can
succeed at an undertaking unless his heart is in the work, and so he
shifts the responsibility of deciding on Professor Carus, whom Robert
"respects," but does not exactly admire enough to follow his advice.

Robert does not consider the Professor a practical man, and so leaves
the matter to his wife. In the meantime songs are written similar to
Heine's, and essays turned off, pinned with the precise synonym, the
phrase exquisite, just like Jean Paul's. Progress in piano-playing goes
steadily forward, with practise on the violin, all under the tutelage of
Madame Carus, who one fine day takes the young man to play for Frederick
Wieck, the best music-teacher in Leipzig.

* * * *