They often travelled together, and sometimes, it would seem, lived together; but the nature of their relation to each other never altered. It is probable that at one time, in the first stage of their friendship, Börne tried to persuade Jeannette to marry him, but her fear lest the relation existing between them might lose its charm by being turned into an ordinary, everyday marriage, a fear which Börne himself afterwards shared, proved an insurmountable obstacle. Considering that they were both free to dispose of themselves as they would, it seems hardly possible that their relation could have remained what it was for all these years without the existence of some slight, it might be almost unconscious, physical antipathy on her side, or on both sides. An outward hindrance to their union undoubtedly existed in the difference of their creeds. Börne belonged to the Christian, Jeannette to the Jewish confession; her orthodox mother was strongly opposed to her becoming a Christian, and in those days great difficulties were placed in the way of mixed marriages. But this was not the main difficulty. Jeannette herself writes that to marry Börne would require "more courage and more self-confidence" than she possesses. And in this instance we see the man whom we knew in his youth as the passionate lover, and who all his life long suffered from a jealous disposition, quickly rise to the height of pure devotion; he constantly urges Jeannette, for her own sake, to marry a man worthy of her, and make a happy home. In 1821, in answer to the words just quoted, Börne writes: "I swear to you by Almighty God that, ardent and often expressed as my desire to make you mine may have been, it has always been more of your happiness than of my own that I have thought. My love for you makes me happy; what more could marriage give me, since it could not increase that love? Though I did not confess it to you, I always dreaded that marriage might drag down our beautiful friendship to the level of everyday, sordid reality. But I thought, what I still think, that _you_ would gain something by it, and this would indirectly have increased my happiness. So there is nothing to prevent you from marrying another man; you and I should lose nothing by that." Strange to say, the truth of this last, audacious assertion was put to the proof. At a somewhat advanced age, Jeannette actually fell in love with and married a man much younger than herself. It was their mutual admiration for Börne that brought the couple together, and in Jeannette's answer to the letter in which Straus asks her to marry him there is a long reference to Börne, so enlightening in its simple eloquence that it cannot be dispensed with in this estimate of his character as a man and as an author. She writes: