orbade all
acquaintance, forbade Robert's visits to his house. Then, inaugurating
at once Clara's career as a _virtuoso_, he took her to Vienna.

No wonder, that, when she appeared there, it was to be as the priestess
of Beethoven. It takes something besides an academy to train artists up
to Beethoven. Robert was forbidden to write to her; but the
"Schwaermibriefe of Eusebius to Chiara," utterly unintelligible to the
general reader of the "Zeitschrift," who, doubtless, fancied that its
editor had gone mad, were quite clear to a certain little lady in
Vienna, who consequently pined less than her father had anticipated.

"Amid all our musical soul-feasts," he writes, "there always peeps out
an angel-face, which more than resembles a certain Clara. Why art thou
not with us? (_Warum!_) And how thou wilt have thought of us last
night, from the 'Meeresstille' to the flaming close of the A major
symphony! I also thought of thee then, Chiara, pure one, bright one,
whose hands are stretched towards Italy, whither thy longing draws thee,
but thy dreamy eye still turned to us."

At length a sun-burst. In 1840 appeared the first number of Schumann's
"Myrthen," whose dedication, _Seiner geliebten Braut_, breaks forth in
the passionate and beautiful song,--"Thou my soul, O thou my heart!"

But this word _Braut_ means Bride in the German sense of "affianced";
and although the joy of this relation passed over Schumann like the
breath of a Tropic, bringing forth, amongst other gorgeous fruits, his
glorious First Symphony, which some one has well called the Symphony of
Bliss, yet, ere this bliss was more than an elusive vision, the two
passed through fierce wildernesses, and drank together of bitter Marahs.
"But of all this," said Florestan, "you will know, if you have the right
to know, from these,"--his "Voice from afar," and his "Night-Pieces."

Neither of us dared break the silence claimed by these exquisite pieces
when they ceased; we shook hands and parted without a word.

III.

But another mystery about the loved and lost master, which I longed to
have revealed, would not let me leave the city. In the afternoon I
sought Boehner, and asked him to walk with me. As soon as we had alluded
to the one subject that bound us together, I requested him to tell me,
what had not yet been given to the world, the details of Schumann's
insanity and death.

Then, as one who takes up a heavy burden to bear it, he proceeded:--

"The hea