more to make his final appeal. Worn out and lacking in further
weapons of any kind, he let the occasion pass, and rested on the
decision of the court. Clara went for one last concert tour as Clara
Wieck.

On the 12th of August, the super-deliberate court handed down its
awesome verdict. It was a verdict of reward for the lovers. Since Wieck
had withdrawn his evidence, the verdict was strongly worded in favour
of the lovers. Schumann wrote Clara, "On this day, Clara, three years
ago, I proposed for your hand."

There was no delay in crying the banns, and the lovers went about as in
a dream of rapture.

On September the 12th, between ten and eleven o'clock of a Saturday, at
Schoenefeld, a village near Leipzig, they were married by an old school
friend of Schumann's. On the 13th, a Sunday, and Clara's birthday--her
twenty-first--she was the wife of the man who had for four years made
her possession his chief ambition, and who had loved her better than he
knew, long years before that.

Thus the lovers gained only one day by their lawsuit, for Clara was now
of age. But who could estimate the value of the struggle in
strengthening and deepening their love for each other and their
worthiness for each other? It is the struggle for existence and the
battle with resistance that bring about the evolution of strength in
the physical world, and in the mental. Can we not say the same of the
sentimental?

Would it not be a great pity if there were never such a gymnasium as
parental resistance for lovers to exercise their hearts in? Shall we
not, then, thank old Wieck for his fine lessons in psychical
culture? His daughter Marie, by the way, Clara's half-sister, has only
this year (1903) published a defence of the old man in answer to the
first volume of Litzmann's new biography.

On Clara's marriage-day she wrote in her diary a little triumph song of
joy. The wedding had been very simple and--

"There was a little dancing. Though no hilarity reigned, still in every
face there was an inner content; it was a beautiful day, and the sun
himself, who had been hidden for many days, poured his mild beams upon
us in the morning as we went to the wedding, as if he would bless our
union. There was nothing disturbing on this day, and so let it be
inscribed in this book as the most beautiful and the most important day
of my life. A period in my existence has now closed. I have endured
very many sorrows in my young years, but also many j