Page:Stories Translated from the German.djvu/213

 find a proper standard for dictating the answer. However, these infuriated German savants were not of this opinion.

After some proposing this, others that, they at length all agreed with the professor's views, that it was necessary to answer this insolent letter forthwith in the most cutting manner, and indeed so, that every polite expression, or phrase of gallantry, or former friendly consideration might and should be excluded. The professor therefore immediately sat down, and wrote in his own bad French, as hastily as he possibly could, the most decisive letter of dismissal to his former fair friend and admirer.

The friends by whom he was surrounded assisted him here and there with a phrase, which the auxiliary imagined to be cutting or witty, and in this manner they produced a most choice collection of the flowers of German anger, which was written upon a common sheet of letter paper, as the professor was now thoroughly ashamed of his gilt-edged, rose-coloured note paper. In this declaration of war, he prohibited them from approaching his person again, and as the enemy might probably be inclined to interpret this ill-mannered