underlined the words: 'Never will I
give my consent.' What I had feared has come true. I must act without
my father's consent and without my father's blessing."

An elopement was seriously considered. It was planned that Clara was to
go to Schumann's sister-in-law. At this time also another friend
offered Schumann one thousand thalers (about $760) and he said: "Ask of
me what you will, I will do everything for you and Clara." But this
crisis did not arrive, though the two were kept under espionage. Even
now in November, 1838, a new and merely nagging attempt was made to
postpone the marriage till the latter part of 1840, but Clara wrote
that she would be with Robert on Easter, 1840, without fail. Then he
went to Vienna to establish his journal there, and from there he sent a
bundle of thirty short poems written in her praise. While he was in
Vienna, her father shipped her off to Paris, so sure now of cleaving
their hearts asunder that he sent her alone without even an elderly
woman for a companion. He little knew that he was putting her to the
test she had never yet undergone: that of living far from him and
depending solely upon herself. It is a curious coincidence that one of
her best friends in Paris was the same American girl, Emily List, who
had once been Ernestine's rival for Robert's heart.

The French people did not please Clara and she feared to go on to
London alone. She dreamed only of hurrying back to Leipzig and Schumann
and a home with him; in her letters the famous pianist seriously
discusses learning to cook.

Unhappy as she was in Paris, Robert was unhappier in Vienna, for the
_Zeitschrift_ made no success, and he was driven to the bitter
humiliation of taking it back to Leipzig in 1839. His brother died at
this time also, and their sympathies had been so close that the shock
was very heavy. Everything seemed to be going wrong. He could not even
find consolation in his music. At this gloomy moment Clara hoped to win
over her father by a last concession. She wrote from Paris that it
would be well to postpone the marriage a few months longer than they
had first intended, and Emily List wrote a long letter advocating the
same and explaining how much it grieved Clara to ask this. She advised
Robert to take up the book business of his brother, who had succeeded
his father's prosperous trade. Even while Clara's tear-stained appeal
was going to him, another letter of his crossed hers. It was full of
joy an