In 1802, after one or two years' residence with a professor at Giessen, young Börne was sent to Berlin, his father being obliged to give in to his desire to study, although on account of his religion this could only lead to his becoming a doctor, a profession for which as yet he showed no turn whatever. He boarded in the house of the famous physician and Kantian, Marcus Herz, whose public lectures on philosophy had drawn such crowded and influential audiences, that the appointment of Professor of Philosophy was conferred on him before any University of Berlin existed. Herz was an eminent physician, a clear thinker, and a good orator; a friend of Lessing, whose poetry he valued as highly as his critical writings. Hence the mysticism of the Romantic school, more especially Hardenberg's, was to him both meaningless and obnoxious. As he died in 1803, his influence on young Börne's development was inconsiderable. All the more powerful was the impression made on the youth by Herz's famous wife, Henriette, _née_ Lemos. She was seventeen years younger than her husband, to whom she was betrothed, without her consent being asked, at the age of twelve. Remarkably beautiful, mistress of many languages, admired by numbers of the most eminent scientific men and authors of the day, she made her house one of the most frequented, most talked of, most looked up to in Berlin. She was thirty-eight, Börne sixteen, but this naturally did not prevent the young man from at once falling violently, though hopelessly, in love with the most beautiful, most distinguished woman it had been his lot to meet. The charming Henriette presented in outward appearance, as well as in character, a marked contrast to her little, clever, ugly husband; she was a faultless beauty, tall and stately as Queen Louise, with the small head we see on Greek statues. She went by the name of the Tragic Muse or the Beautiful Circassian. She was worshipped by Wilhelm von Humboldt, by Mirabeau, by Schleiermacher, and after her husband's death she was surrounded by a bevy of men of position, who all wooed the fair widow in vain. She refused all offers, in spite of her poverty rejected even the hand of the richest noblemen in Germany, and took the place of governess to the future Empress of Russia. She was as severely virtuous as she was intoxicatingly beautiful. She was on terms of intimacy with more than one man, but always within the strict bounds of friendship.