ve on Schumann's earnings,
though she insisted that Schumann was assured of one thousand thalers a
year, and she could earn an equal sum with one concert a winter in
Dresden, where prices were so high. But just then the prosperity of
Schumann's paper began to slough off. It occurred to the lovers that
they would prefer to live in Vienna, and that the _Zeitschrift_ could
prosper there. There were endless difficulties, a censorship to pacify,
and many commercial schemes to arrange, but nothing must be left
untried. The scheme was put under way. Meanwhile, as usual, the Wiecks
were trying on their part; to separate the lovers. Schumann was accused
of infidelity to her, and he admitted that a Mrs. Laidlaw seemed to be
in love with him, but not he with her. They attacked his character, and
accused him of being too fond of Bavarian beer. On this charge, he
answered with dignity:

"Pooh!--I should not be worth being spoken to, if a man trusted by so
good and noble a girl as you, should not be a respectable man and not
control himself in everything. Let this simple word put you at ease for
ever."

Failing here, Wieck presented another candidate for Clara's heart, a
Doctor D----, who met the same fate as Banck. There were further hopes
that she would find some one in Paris or London, whither she was bound;
but she wrote Schumann that if the whole aristocracy of both places
fell at her feet, she would let them lie there and turn to the simple
artist, the dear, noble man, and lay her heart at his feet. ("Alle
Lords von London und alle Cavaliere von Paris, koennten mir zu Fuessen
liegen," etc.) Clara was also tormented by the persistent suit of Louis
Rackerman, of Bremen, who could not see how vain was his quest.

One rainy night, Schumann stood a half-hour before her house and heard
her play. And he wrote her: "Did you not feel that I was there?" He
could even see his ring glitter on her finger. Another day Clara saw
him taking his coffee with his sister-in-law, and she repeated his
query: "Did you not feel that I was there?"

Old Wieck stooped to everything, and even told Clara that he had
written to Ernestine to demand a statement that she fully released
Schumann from his former engagement to her--it being remembered that
among Germans a betrothal always used to be almost as difficult a bond
to sever as a marriage tie. This drove Clara to resolve a great
resolve, and she wrote Schumann:

"Twice has my father in his letters