the deep feelings I am unable to express; and when I am weary, my strength worn down, I think of the dear ones at home, whom I love

and who love me with tender-ness... And when I think of these things, the spirit of melancholy smiles upon me softly, with grave, glad eyes, so that I can do nothing but weep... Ah! Mother, my nature is very quiet, and every creature who feels as deeply as I do is without doubt unhappy."

Clara had reached her eleventh year, and several days after Schumann's arrival she gave her first concert.

The next day the magazines and newspapers wrote of her, praising her art, admiring her to the utmost, and acquainting the public with her precocious genius.

In the course of that year she published her first composi-tion, the Four Polonaises, with Hofmeister. A special copy was reserved for Mr. Schumann, "who has been living with us since the feast of St. Michael of the year 1830, and who is studying music."

Soon there sprang up between this marvelous girl and this ado-lescent genius an acquaintance, then an accord. At this very time there appeared in Vienna a new composition by another genius, Frédéric Chopin, Schumann's contemporary. The two became acquainted, and Clara wrote in her diary: "Chopin's piece Les Variations, which I studied in eight days, is the most difficult piece I have seen and played up to now..."

On the eighth of November of the year 1832, Schumann and Clara gave a concert in Zwickau, in the course of which the first movement of an unfinished symphony was performed. During this concert Madame Schumann made Clara's acquaintance. The girl was thirteen. And one day, as the two of them were looking

out the window and Robert was greeting her from the street, the mother said to the girl in a low voice: "One day you must marry my son Robert."

The years pass, and the bonds of friendship between them grow firm; they join forces in play-ing, then