able both to conquer their
difficulties and to express their deep meanings. While Schumann was
earning his living and a wide reputation by publishing the praises of
other composers, by burrowing in all the obscure meaning of new
geniuses, and revealing their messages to the world, his own great
works were lying ignored and uncomprehended and seemingly forgotten. At
this time he found a young girl of brilliant fame, honoured by Chopin,
Liszt, by Goethe, by the king, by the public; and yet devoted to the
soul and the art of the fellow pupil of her father. Even before he
broke his engagement with Ernestine, he found Clara's charms
irresistible.

Chopin came to Leipzig in 1834, and in Schumann's diary after his name
stands the entry: "Clara's eyes and her love." And later, "The first
kiss in November."

It was on the 25th. He had been calling on Clara, and when it came time
to go home, she carried a lamp to light him down the steps. He could
keep his secret no longer from himself or from her; he declared his
love then and there. But she reminded him of Ernestine, and, with that
trivial perjury to which lovers are always apt, he informed her that
Ernestine was already engaged to some one else. There was no further
resistance, but nearly a serious accident. The kiss that set their
hearts afire came near working the same effect upon the house. As Clara
wrote afterward:

"When you gave me that first kiss, then I felt myself near swooning.
Before my eyes it grew black!... The lamp I brought to light you, I
could hardly hold."

Schumann writes a few days later in his diary: "Mit Ernestine
gebrochen." Schumann consoled himself later by saying that he did
Ernestine no wrong, for it would have been a greater and more terrible
misery had they married. "Earlier or later my old love and attachment
for you would have awakened again, and then what misery!... Ernestine
knew right well that she had first driven you out of my heart, that I
loved you before I knew Ernestine."

Ernestine herself wrote him often.

"I always believed that you could love Clara alone, and still believe
it."

In January, 1836, the engagement with Ernestine was formally broken.
Shortly after this, Robert's mother died. He was compelled to leave
Leipzig in dismal gloom. He said to Clara simply, "Bleib mir treu," and
she nodded her head a little, very sadly. How she kept her word! Two
nights later he wrote:

"While waiting for the coach at Zwickau,

"10