They resolved to draw me into their company, to show me every demonstration of friendship, and to render me every possible service. By this means they hoped, in the first place, as a result of our intercourse, to win for themselves some of the respect which was shown to me, and, in the second place, to obtain, from my frank and communicative spirit, some additional knowledge of those sciences which as yet they knew only in name. But, in the third place, as they knew my enthusiasm for everything which I once recognised as good, they expected to intoxicate me with the allurements of sensual pleasure, and to cool in some measure my ardour in the study of science, which would at the same time alienate my friends, my intimacy with whom made them so jealous. Accordingly they invited me into their society, testified their friendship and esteem for me, and begged the honour of my company. Suspecting no harm, I received their advances with pleasure, especially as I reflected that Mendelssohn and my other friends were too grand for everyday intercourse with me. It became therefore a very desirable object with me, to find some friends of a middle class, with whom I could associate _sans façon_, and enjoy the charms of familiarity. My new friends took me into gay society, to taverns, on pleasure excursions, at last also to ----;[57] and all this at their own expense. I, on my side, in my happy humour, opened up to them in return all the mysteries of philosophy, explained to them in detail all the peculiar systems, and corrected their ideas on various subjects of human knowledge. But as things of this sort cannot be poured into a man's head, and as these gentlemen had no special capacity for them, of course they were not able to make any great progress by this kind of instruction. When I observed this, I began to express some sort of contempt for them, and made no attempt to conceal the fact, that it was mainly the roast and the wine that gave me pleasure in their company. This did not please them particularly; and as they were unable to reach their object with me completely, they tried to reach it at least in part. They told tales to my grand friends behind my back about the most trifling incidents and expressions. For instance, they asserted that I charged Mendelssohn with being a philosophical hypocrite, that I declared others to be endowed with but shallow pates, that I was seeking to spread dangerous systems, and that I was wholly abandoned to Epicureanism. (As if they were genuine Stoics!) They even began at last openly to manifest their enmity.