Schumann chasing a girl

Schumann once attended a masquerade during the carnival of 1830, in company with his friend Rosen, for the purpose of paying some attention to a pretty but otherwise insignificant girl.He knew that she would be present at the ball, and, as a pretext for approaching her, put a poem in his pocket.Fortune favored him: he met and recognized her; but, as he was about to take a carnival liberty, and hand her the poem, the girl’s mother stepped threateningly between, “Keep you poems to yourself, Mask: my daughter does not understand poetry.”

Josef Wilhelm von Wasiliewski: Life of Robert Schumann. Boston, 1871
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