But the heart and soul of the new movement to improve the German stage was Caroline Neuber, keen-sighted, energetic, sympathetic. Caroline Neuber organized a theatrical troupe upon moral lines hitherto unknown in the history of the stage. All unmarried actresses of the troupe lived with her. She watched their conduct closely and insisted upon decorum. The unmarried actors of the company were obliged to dine at her table. No tavern temptations were to be put in their way. Madame Neuber began by presenting only classic tragedies, but public demand forced her to alternate tragedy with farce. From Hamburg she wrote: "Our tragedies and comedies are fairly well attended. The trouble we have taken to improve taste has not been thrown away. I find here various converted hearts. Persons whom I have least expected to do so have become lovers of poetry, and there are many who appreciate our orderly, artistic plays." Of Caroline Neuber, Lessing says: "One must be very prejudiced not to allow to this famous actress a thorough knowledge of her art. She had masculine penetration, and in one point only did she betray her sex. She delighted in stage trifles. All plays of her arrangement are full of disguises and pageants, wondrous and glittering. But, after all, Neuber may have known the hearts of the Leipzig burghers, and put these settings in to please them, as flies are caught with treacle." For a while, Madame Neuber scored a brilliant success in Saxony. Then the public, following a corrupt court, grew tired of classical poetry and virtue on the stage, and clamored for its old diet of buffoonery and immorality. Neuber refused to lower the standard of her plays. In 1733 her contract with the court theatre expired, and the king refused to renew it. He placed a Merry Andrew at the head of the court theatre. In Hamburg and Saint Petersburg, Madame Neuber received similar treatment. But this true artist would not give up her fight for a pure stage. She wrote: "We could earn a great deal of money if we would play only the tasteless, the obscene, the cheap blood-curdling or the silly, fashionable plays. But we have undertaken what is good. We will not forsake the path as long as we have a penny. Good must continue good." Caroline Neuber and her husband were growing old. They were bitterly poor. They played subordinate, but never immoral, parts now in any troupe that would take them. They had broken with Gottsched, whose wife was dead. One good friend, Dr. Loeber, remained, however. Dr. Loeber gave the old couple a room, rent free, in Dresden. In the war of 1756, Prussian soldiers, quartered in Dresden, slept in the same room with the Neubers. But the soldiers treated the aged actress with the greatest respect. Not an indecent word was ever uttered by them in her presence. Not a pipe was ever laid upon her poor little writing table. When her husband died in that over-crowded attic, Prussian soldiers bore him, tenderly and reverently, to his grave.