Page:The Works of J. W. von Goethe, Volume 5.djvu/111

Rh rical lovers, peasants, and heroes: and this Babylonish idiom was rendered still more confused by another odd ingredient; as I liked to hear the French reformed clergy, and visited their churches the more willingly, as a Sunday walk to Bockenheim was on this account not only permitted but ordered. But even this was not enough: for as, in my youthful years, I had always been chiefly directed to the German of the sixteenth century, I soon included the French also of that noble epoch among the objects of my inclination. Montaigne, Amyot, Rabelais, Marot, were my friends, and excited in me sympathy and delight. Now, all these different elements moved in my discourse chaotically one with another, so that for the hearer the meaning was lost in the oddity of the expression; nay, an educated Frenchman could no more courteously correct me, but had to censure me and tutor me in plain terms. I therefore fared here once more as I had fared at Leipzig, except that on this occasion I could not appeal to the right of my native place to speak idiomatically, as well as other provinces, but, being on a foreign ground and soil, was forced to adapt myself to traditional laws.

Perhaps we might even have resigned ourselves to this, if an evil genius had not whispered into our ears that all endeavours by a foreigner to speak French would remain unsuccessful; for a practised ear can perfectly well detect a German, Italian, or Englishman under a French mask. One is tolerated, but never received into the bosom of the only church of language.

Only a few exceptions were granted. They named to us a Herr von Grimm; but even Schöpflin, it seemed, did not reach the summit. They allowed that he had early seen the necessity of expressing himself in French to perfection; they approved of his inclination to converse with every one, and especially to entertain the great and persons of rank; they