Thus: before these two were fully conscious of the love they bore each other, the shrewd eye of old Wieck had caught a glimpse of what was coming to pass. He had educated this girl to be an artist to bring _him_ fame; alas, it must be confessed that he thought also of certain prospective thalers. Willing as he was that all Leipsic should admire his daughter, he did not like the enthusiasm of the "Zeitschrift." He then began to warn Clara against "this Faust in modern garb, who, when he had gained one finger, would soon have the whole hand, and finally the poor soul into the bargain!" Stupid old schoolmaster, thou shouldst have known that it is Mephistopheles, and not Faust, that women hate! The old man, finding that his warnings were of no avail, forbade 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 "Schwärmibriefe 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.