At the end of the letter he adds:
'Brahms has written a quite wonderful trio, and is a man to be taken in every respect as a pattern. With all his depth, he is healthy, fresh, and lively, entirely untouched by modern morbidness.'
It now became the cherished duty of the young men to do what in them lay to support and comfort the sorely-tried wife in her desolation. Nothing, perhaps, could have helped and soothed her so much as the feeling that the tie which primarily bound them to her was that of their devotion to her husband, the knowledge that they mourned with her in a common grief, and that their sympathy was touched by their personal sense of what she had lost. Never, indeed, was more loyal sympathy offered for the consolation of sorrow, and it had its reward. After the first terrible days had been lived through, a calm and self-possession returned to the illustrious lady, which heightened, if possible, the young artists' admiration of her. The news from Endenich improved towards the end of the month, and on April 1 even became reassuring. The patient was now passing his time walking, or quietly sleeping, undisturbed by fits of anxiety or delusions of hearing; was gentle towards his attendant, had conversed a little with him, and had even made a joke appropriate to the day. Frau Schumann summoned up courage to look with hope to the future, and allowed herself to be persuaded to resume some of her ordinary avocations. The short remainder of the musical season was, indeed, passed in necessary retirement; but the great pianist found solace in quietly studying her husband's compositions anew with Dietrich, Brahms, Grimm, and others of the circle, playing his great orchestral and choral works with them on the pianoforte, and listening in turn to their performances. Dietrich writes in March:
'Yesterday and the day before she went through the whole of Schumann's "Faust" music with us. We are with her every day, and it is impossible for me to think of leaving at present.'
Frau Schumann found congenial occupation in the summer in writing a set of variations on the theme of her husband's Album-Blatt, Op. 99, No. 1:
etc.
[Listen]
—which itself refers to the composer's early work, Op. 5, Variations on a theme by Clara Wieck, and a touching memorial of Brahms' efforts to assist in diverting her mind from its burden of sorrow exists in his treatment of the same theme in his Variations for the pianoforte on a theme of Robert Schumann, Op. 9, dedicated to Frau Clara Schumann. This work was begun during the period of Frau Schumann's convalescence after the birth of her seventh child on June 11. Each new variation was brought to her as it was completed. Grimm, who remained at Düsseldorf during these months in close companionship with Johannes, christened the work 'Trost-Einsamkeit' (Consolation in loneliness), and remembered it as such ever afterwards. It tells plainly enough the story of the young composer's thoughts. It is full of references to Schumann and his wife—notably in the ninth variation, which contains note for note reminiscences of Schumann's Album-Blatt, Op. 99, No. 2, and in the tenth, in which the first four bars of Clara Wieck's original theme
