In her circle a line was drawn between the admissible coquetry which aims at enthralling the whole man, and the inadmissible, which only aims at enthralling his senses. She herself belonged to the dangerous class of virtuous flirts. Of a passionless temperament and much addicted to sentimental moralising, she founded in her younger days a "Tugendbund" (league of virtue), in which Wilhelm von Humboldt played the principal part, and of which old and young, known and unknown men, were members. They called each other Thou, wrote long letters to each other in foreign languages or in Greek or Hebrew characters, exchanged rings or silhouettes, aimed at each other's "moral development," desired "to attain happiness by self-devotion" (unencumbered by duties, for self-devotion knows no duties), and ignored the rules and regulations of conventional propriety--but in all chastity and honour. Rahel laughed at them, and would have nothing to do with the league. The letters the members of the league exchanged bear a strong resemblance to those which passed a little later in Denmark between Kamma Rahbek and Molbech. They were absorbed in their own feelings, but in constant self-examination, thereby naturally depriving their feelings of all freshness. Friends of different sexes explained to each other in interminable letters, with written tears, how they mutually supplemented and developed one another. They tore themselves up into lint, and contemplated themselves in this unravelled condition; they did not collect themselves for each other's benefit, but spun themselves out. They put their inner man under pressure till the result was a liquid--tears, heart's blood, or such like--and this they poured into the bosom of a like-minded friend, without themselves becoming in any way more remarkable or original under this treatment. The beautiful and noble Henriette Herz herself was less an original personality than what the Germans call an "Anempfinderin." From the remarkable men with whom she came in contact, she seldom assimilated more than what she picked up from a surface knowledge of their ways and doings. What brought her particularly into notice was the tender friendship existing between her and Schleiermacher. It was much talked about in Berlin, but with no insinuation of evil. The contrast was too striking between the "Tragic Muse" and little Schleiermacher, whose distinguished head was set upon a fragile, slightly deformed body. People smiled good-naturedly when they saw the little pastor coming out of Henriettas house in the evening with a lantern fastened to the button of his coat, or when they met him in the daytime hanging on the arm of his majestic Melpomene. A caricature appeared, in which she was represented carrying him--the jewel, as he was called--in her hand, like a parasol.[9]